Another testing fixture, with the team coming from two points down to secure a draw.

Tony was first to finish with a draw on board four. As Tony explains: “I declined the Queen’s Gambit as black. Queens were exchanged early and it seemed to me that I had an advantage – white had used tempi pushing a3, b4 which weakened his queenside and leaving  his king still a little vulnerable in the centre. I spent a lot of time searching for how to exploit this, but failed. Afterwards of course, the computer showed me instantly the knight sacrifice which would have yielded a three point gain!  As it was the game soon descended into a dead draw. Apart from white’s blunder in giving the sacrifice opportunity and mine in missing it, both players were pretty accurate throughout.”

In my own game, I established a strong initiative on the white side of a Pirc. Playing the Austrian attack , I was able to chase Black’s Nf6 to g4 then h6 and , after the castled king moved aside, to h8! With a large lead in development, I should have ploughed forward with h4 and g4 but instead chose the more circumspect plan of castling. Rather like Tony, I sought in vain for a killer manoeuvre to exploit my advantage but instead I ‘blundered’ allowing a fork on two of my piece. It transpires that even then I could have stayed in the game with best play (see game fragment below) but I missed the opportunity and my game rapidly went south. Yet another missed opportunity.

We were soon two points down when Simon lost on two. As Simon reports: “As Black, I played the Chigorin against 1.d4 and quickly sacrificed a pawn for potential activity which never materialised. Instead I ended up in a difficult middlegame in which my opponent  was having all the fun. Finally, I managed to get into an endgame a pawn down but with my opponent’s better-positioned king and rook in conjunction with his more advanced pawns, he was able to secure  a well-deserved victory.”

The fightback began when Jason took full advantage of having the white pieces. In Jason’s words: “I played the Birds opening. My opponent decided to keep his king in the middle and, seeing that I was making preparations with a rook f3 move, he decided on a king side attack pushing his h pawn. I then almost captured my opponent’s queen, but a rook for a bishop exchange saved his queen.  I was able to keep his black bishop out of play behind his pawn structure and the game came down to R+ 3P vs. R+1P, which I subsequently converted to a win.

So the match hinged on Xavier’s game on top board. When I first looked at the game, I was relieved to see that Xavier was pawn up in a R+P endgame. Then I looked at his clock and saw he had seven seconds left: he was living on increments. At this stage the path to a win was far from obvious and at least twice in the ensuing moves, Xavier’s clock ticked down to 2 seconds but (oh for young nerves!) he kept his cool and exchanged down to rook and two connected passed pawns vs. R+1P which offered a clearer route to victory, which he finally managed to close out.

A dropped half-point means we concede our 100% record, but 3½ from 4 in our opening matches keeps us well in the hunt for a successful season.