Ploughing Through

In the early hours of the morning a few days before this match Phil and I decided we should wear suits. The rationale was loosely along the lines that most of the Knights came straight from work and we didn't want to be under dressed. We failed to pull this off. The younger Kraken's footwear left something to be desired as trainers weren't entirely the image we were going for and apparently my tie made me look like a Labour Party canvasser. New DK recruit Mr Raoof joined us in the bar for a prematch nerve settler, eager to hear the news but we were unable to provide him with details of our scoop at the time.

With two tough fixtures to come in the shape of Wood Green and Cavendish, there were to be no cheap draws from our end as we needed to exploit the home advantage. It was after more than two hours of play before results started coming in. Sophie's neat win was the first.

We stormed to an early 4-0 lead and managed to convert it to a 7-4 win with board 2 adjourned. So DK2 are off the mark with a convincing result over our similar strength opposition. 

	DRUNKEN KNIGHTS 2	ECF		ECF	RICHMOND
1	Carsten Pedersen	191	0 - 1	215	IM Gavin Wall
2	Richard Black	193	0 - 1	196	Thomas Nixon
3	Adam Raoof	188	1 - 0	192	Michael Healey
4	Sophie Tidman	187	1 - 0	194	Chetan Deva
5	Dom Goodwin	185	1 - 0	192	Martin Benjamin
6	Chris Russell	187	½ - ½	176	Robert Heaton
7	Phil Makepeace	185	1 - 0	174	Franciscos Domingos
8	Aidan Rawlinson	178	½ - ½	178	Julien Shepley
9	Nevil Chan	176	0 - 1	175	James McCarthy
10	Neville Blackie	180	1 - 0	174	Michael Smart
11	Peter Ackley	180	½ - ½	164	John Burke
12	Doug Bennett	171	½ - ½	147	Abraham Neviazsky
		Ave 183	7 - 5	Ave 181

My effort was a classic case of how to turn a better position into a worse one, an underrated skill in the chess world. Annotations are based upon the game's post-mortem which, naturally, we conducted back at the bar.

Chris Russell (187) - (176) Robert Heaton

1. e4 c6 2. Nf3 g6 3. d4 Bg7 4. Be2 d6 5. a4 Nf6 6. Nc3 Nbd7?

After 6. … 0-0 7. 0-0 We have reached a mainline classical pirc but this move is too slow.

7. e5!

It begins!

7... dxe5 8. dxe5 Nd5!

Both 8. … Nh5 9. g4 and 8. … Ng4 9. e6! fxe6 10. Ng5 leave black completely ruined.

9. Nxd5 cxd5 10. Qxd5 Nxe5

The point of black's 8^th move.

11. Qxd8+

11. Bb5+ Nd7 12. 0-0 lacks pace as after 12… a6 black will untangle.

11… Kxd8 12. 0-0 Nxf3+ 13. Bxf3 Kc7

It's all looking rather good for me here but I cleverly fail to capitalise over the next few moves.

14. Re1 Re8 15. Ra3 Bd7 16. Bd5

An attempt to gain a tempo on the f7 pawn but it's more than happy to move eventually.

16... e6 17. Bf4+ e5 18. Be3 f5 19. Rc3+ 

So I've managed to isolate the Queenside pawns as black has no sensible alternative to his next.


19... Bc6

But here I rather miss the target as 20. b4! leaves black in all manner of difficulties. A potential continuation 20… Red8 21. Bxc6 bxc6 22. b5 Rd6 just about holds the fort for the time being but white has all the chances.

20. g3? Rad8! 


The a7 pawn is left to be gobbled but black can win one back. 


21. Bxc6 bxc6 22. a5 Rd5 23. Ra3 Bf8! 


Continuing to harass the Rook.


24. Ra4 a6

I was really beginning to dislike my position around here, it's all gone rather passive.

25. Re2 Rb5 26. c3 Rb3 27. Rd2 c5 28. Kf1 Kc6 29. Ra2? 

A square so poor I almost choked on my own vomit after leaving it there. Had vague ideas of freeing up the d2 Rook but it's rather sluggish. 

29... Bd6 30. f3 Bc7

We'd agreed to the quickplay finish pre-match and so reached the time control here. Black has all the play and the a5 pawn is looking rather loose. The kingside starts rolling too over the next few moves.

31. Ke2 f4 32. Bf2 h5 33. Ra4 g5 34. Kd1 Reb8 35. Kc1 Rb5 36. Re2

This makes things a little awkward for black with tricks like 36. … Re8? 37. gxf4 gxf4 38. Rxf4 and combined with Rob's time trouble I figured it was a decent time to toss out the draw offer which was accepted

½ – ½

Daylight Robbery in London N10

Having participated in many of their First Thursday blitz tournaments, I've become quite fond of Hendon and friendly with many of their players. And now that Adam Raoof's joined Drunken Knights, I predict he'll be appearing on these pages more than he perhaps would like. 

Hendon's Middlesex League triumph last season owed a lot to an influx of familiar names for crucial fixtures. Names like D'Costa, Summerscale, Williams, Trent and Cherniaev, all of which may or may not have had letters after them. But now they're attempting to retain the title as a strictly amateur outfit, and they've got a great chance of doing so despite a 6-2 reversal at Ealing. 

Especially if they keep turning out killer teams like this:

	MUSWELL HILL	ECF	Result	ECF	HENDON
1	Tryfon Gavriel (w)	199	0 – 1	203	Cristian Mures
2	Chris Russell	187	1 – 0	203	Tomer Eden
3	Phil Makepeace	185	½ - ½	204	Robert Willmoth
4	Alecos Ethelontis	186	0 – 1	194	Gary Senior
5	Dominic Norcliffe-Brown	153	0 – 1	e178	Gayan Peiris
6	Dick House	162	½ - ½	188	Adam Raoof
7	Morris Stranger	141	0 – 1	e184	Darlan Rodrigo Veit
8	Simon Wilks	149	½ - ½	176	Isaac Sanders
		Ave 170.3	2½ - 5½	Ave 191.3

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

And you can forget about the represented grades on Boards 5, 7 and 8. Isaac is 12 years old and digustingly good; I didn't even need John Fleetwood telling me that about his protégé, his quality is well known. In addition, the two ungraded players wouldn't look out of place on the top boards. And so it unfortunately proved, as two of the juniors I was blooding fell first. 

I was next to follow, after this mini-thriller.

Philip J. Makepeace (185) - (204) Robert F. Willmoth

My season record with the white bits before this match was a rather shaming +0 -3 =9. And so after losing the toss, I expected to be unable to contribute to the hoodoo. However, Mike Bennett had other ideas and gave his troops white on evens.

1. e4 d6 2. d4 Nf6 3. Nc3 c6 4. a4?!

Simply not realising it was a Czech Pirc. 

4... Qa5 5. Bd2 e5 6. Nd5

I quite liked the look of the positions that followed, so I took an early opportunity to relieve the pressure on d5 and e4.

6... Qd8 7. Nxf6+ Qxf6 8. Nf3 Bg4 9. Bc3 Nd7 10. Be2 Bxf3 11. Bxf3 Be7 12. Bg4

An attempt to exploit the bishop pair. And, frankly, designed to annoy black as much as possible. 

12... Nf8 13. O-O h5!?

Fair enough. 14. Bxh5 Qh6 is horrible so I'm pretty much forced to shove Boris into an outpost. However, black is now almost certainly not going to castle so I can start building plans around the destruction of the centre.

14. Bh3 g5 15. Bf5 Ne6 16. d5 Ng7

Having eliminated the bishop pair, I think Rob was feeling pretty good at this point. However, I have a shot that blows the position wide open and probably maintains a small plus as a result of my snug king.

17. f4!? gxf4 18. Rxf4 Qg5 19. Rf3 Nxf5 20. exf5 f6

Time to take stock. And I liked what I saw. While black's bishop is obviously very unhappy with life, mine still needs to get properly involved. But I felt most confident about going after his king, so that's what I, er, decided to do.

21. Qd3 Qg8!

Going backwards to go forwards. It also very importantly prevents my queen coming to c4 followed by penetration on e6.

22. dxc6 bxc6 

23. Rd1?!

Unnecessary prophylaxis. I had considered the alternative 23. Qa6 but considered that 23... Qd5 24. Rd3 Qc5+ 25. Kh1 Qb6 wasn't so great. However, 24. b4! or the extraordinary 24. Be1! would have been enormous. 

23... Kd7? 

The last chance for black to shut up shop on the queenside with 23... a5.

24. Bxe5?

One of those deliberations. And one which tends to appeal to my 'what the hell' psyche. It just looked too good. 24. Bb4 maintains the advantage and creates holes everywhere after the forced 24... d5.

24... fxe5 25. f6 Bf8 26. f7?

Time to bail out, or so I thought. I had considered the game sequence to be forced, however black had better options. 

26... Qg4 27. Qa6 Rc8 28. Qxa7+ Rc7 29. Qb8 Rc8 30. Qb7+

27... Qb4! would have been crushing in view 28. Rb3 Qc5+ 29. Kh1 Qxc2 30. Rb7+ Ke6 31. Rf1 when the black king is quite safe.

½ - ½

After very good +EV draws with black on 6 and 8, we were two down with three to play. And had better positions on all three. First of these to finish was Chris after a fantastic performance. Full annotations to follow.

Unfortunately, Tryfon and Alecos couldn't convert and both lost in time scrambles. Indeed, you can hear Tryfon getting all angry and overexcited about his game here. So the scoreline took a rather sombre turn. The return fixture is on January 20 - looking forward to it already.