Club Night - 21st Mar 2022

Crawford Macnab

21 March 2022

Three exciting friendly games were played on 21st Mar 2022!

Friendlies

21st Mar 2022

	White			Black
1	Eric Smith	1621	½ - ½	Euan McDiarmid
2	Allan McDiarmid	1740	½ - ½	Charles Gunn-Russell	1797
3	Stuart McKinney	1455	0 - 1	Paul Girdwood	1524

Allan and Charles played a ruy lopez where whites knight got awkwardly placed on d3 (blocking pawn on d2) to protect threat of checkmate on f2.

With black queen on d4 and bishop on a7 threatening f2, white played Qe3 to block this threat. Unexpectedly Charles took the white knight on c3 exposing a threat on Qe3 by the bishop. Always worth checking all possible checks and captures! White took bishop on a7 with queen and then both queens were captured to simplify down to a level balanced middle game. A riskier approach for black was to sacrifice the rook on a8 by taking c2 pawn and then the knight on d3, trapping the white king in the centre?!
In the end a bishop v knight endgame was agreed drawn.

Eric and Euan played a game where white had good control of the e file and a strong knight outpost on e5. This allowed white to advance all three king side pawns to gain further space further cramping the black position. Euan patiently defended well with some threats to pin queen (or knight) against white king on the light squares. In the end this proved sufficient to earn a draw. In the position shown white may have been better to force queens off with Qd6+ to give a pawn up minor piece ending.

Stuart and Paul played a French defence that eventually lead to both players attacking each others king position. It looked like black’s attack was the stronger and Stuart resigned in a position where it may not have been so clear that it was lost. On further analysis it did look like he was lost but a more detailed analysis may follow!

On closer inspection although blacks attack looked more threatening his pieces and pawn on g4 were getting in the way of each other. On move 30 white played Qa8 check when instead bishop taking pawn on d5 is crushing and leads to a checkmate. The black king is too exposed especially with all his defenders committed to the king side.

Despite this white was still ok until 35. Rd4 was played. Instead rook to the b file targeting b7 was still winning. Instead tables are turned and black forces through!

 

Crawford, Sandy and Nick played some 15 minute friendlies before watching the concluding games above.