First team starts with a home win!
Crawford Macnab
31 October 2022
We hosted Edinburgh 3 for our first Chess Edinburgh League match since 9th March 2020!
On grading both teams were evenly matched, looked close for a long time but in the end we won 4½ - 1½.
I got in to some time trouble so did not manage to see how many of the games finished!
Matt had a quick win with the white pieces against Lindsay McGregor. Black allowed an h pawn advance, opening of h file and queen starting a king hunt with Qh6+. King fled to e8 but there was no hiding and Matt finished nicely with a check mate on e7.
Allan had a challenging time with the black pieces, struggling to untangle with his queen being harassed by the white minor pieces.
Charles managed to win a pawn but in the resultant rook and pawn ending his rook was awkwardly placed and the extra pawn could not be used to advantage. Draw agreed.
Richard looked to be struggling with a rook needed on d7 to defend attacked pawn on f7. This blocked in the bishop on c8 and it looked like white would press home his advantage. In the end tables were turned and Richard won.
Euan took his time and in the end appeared to have advantage with multiple minor pieces proving decisive. A great result for Euan on his debut for the first team!
My game was last to finish and as mentioned I had fallen behind on the clock. Position looked likely to be blockaded on the queen side but with time control looming I needlessly moved my queen to a5 and after white played b6 the position was indeed blockaded but my queen was now on its own on the wrong side of the pawn chain! All white had to do was to shuffle pieces to allow his knight to trap my queen. This soon happened but my queen was exchanged for a white rook which softened the blow. Still behind on the clock I just had to patiently watch white slowly march his king to the middle of the board and reorganise to open lines on the kingside. White then blundered a knight for a pawn on the queen side giving a glimmer of hope but I only had less than 1 minute left on the clock. Although still losing the position was less clear and white had plenty of time advantage so declined my desparate draw offer. White then did not realise he was soon also down to less than a minute left and with no immediate breakthrough, lost on time with 9 seconds left on my clock. Very fortunate to win on time but always worth playing on!
Great to start with a win.
| Civil Service 1 | Civil Service 1 | Edinburgh 3 | Edinburgh 3 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Crawford T Macnab | 1760 | 1 - 0 | David Archibald | 1802 | ||
| 2 | Matt Rounds | 1749 | 1 - 0 | Lindsay McGregor | 1763 | ||
| 3 | Allan McDiarmid | 1732 | 0 - 1 | Chris McIntee | 1725 | ||
| 4 | Charles Gunn-Russell | 1718 | ½ - ½ | Colin Hutchison | 1673 | ||
| 5 | Richard Scott | 1677 | 1 - 0 | Martin Brejter | 1672 | ||
| 6 | Euan McDiarmid | 1519 | 1 - 0 | Tobias Forbes | |||
| 4½ - 1½ | |||||||