Brian Wurr Memorial Match

Crawford Macnab

28 March 2022

We visited Corstorphine for a 2nd Brian Wurr memorial friendly match played over 10 boards.

All games were closely contested and in the end we finished with a convincing victory by 7½ to 2½.

Charles went a pawn down with the black pieces but had some compensation that allowed simplification into a drawn ending. Draw agreed.

Allan always had a slight edge in a major piece middle game and when all the major pieces came off, a pawn up ending was decisive.

Euan reached a blockaded French Defence position where neither side could safely make progress without significant risk. A draw being a fair result.

Matt patiently pushed forward with his extra pawn proving decisive in the end.

Eric narrowly won in an endgame with two bishops and pawns against rook and pawns.

Douglas had an active queen against two rooks where his opponent had an exposed uncastled king and undeveloped bishop and rook. Win for Douglas.

Gerry had a good space advantage and better coordinated pieces.

From what I recall, Simeon went the exchange up but his opponent defended well and it took a while to break through.

Sandy was mostly level for most of the game but lost in the end.

On board one I had some initiative against the black king that was a bit exposed having moved pawns forward to g6, f6 and e6. With white about to force though on the black squares, black creatively gave up a pawn to allow his queen to retreat and help parry the attack. In quick play finish I took the safe option and exchanged queens but with opposite coloured bishops the extra pawn was insufficient. Keeping queens on was riskier but may have given some chances for the win though black looked to have defensive resources and possible perpetual.

Thanks to Corstorphine for hosting the match. Apparently Corstorphine are looking for a new venue as the Corstorphine community hub and all the buildings in the block are due to be demolished ahead of a new build!

	Corstorphine		Corstorphine		Civil Service		Civil Service
1	Chris Sykes	1791	½ - ½	Crawford T Macnab	1811
2	Alistair K J MacNaughton	1705	½ - ½	Charles Gunn-Russell	1797
3	Brian Gourlay	1583	0 - 1	Allan McDiarmid	1740
4	Graham Wilson	1509	0 - 1	Matt Rounds	1736
5	Palanivel Somasundaram	1504	0 - 1	Eric P Smith	1621
6	David Burns	1480	½ - ½	Euan McDiarmid
7	David Ainsworth	1354	0 - 1	Gerry Brown	1435
8	Krishan Paterson		0 - 1	Douglas Heatlie	1418
9	Morvin Gera	1270	0 - 1	Simeon Tsvetkov
10	Michael Anderson	1234	1 - 0	Sandy Powell	1108
				2½ - 7½

Click here for a list of news stories about this competition.