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.

Matt Rounds

Lindsay McGregor

1-0

1. d4 g6 2. Nf3 Bg7 3. Nc3 d6 4. e4 e6 5. Be3 Ne7 6. Qd2 O-O 7. Bh6 Nd7 8. h4 f5 9. h5 Nf6 10. hg6 hg6 11. Bg7 Kg7 12. Qh6 Kf7 13. Ng5 Ke8 14. O-O-O Bd7 15. ef5 gf5 16. Re1 Qc8 17. Bc4 d5 18. Nd5 ed5 19. Qg6

 

[19. Qg7 Ng8 20. Rh7]

 

19... Kd8 20. Nf7

 

[20. Qg7 Ne4 21. Qf8 Be8 22. Rh8 Kd7 23. Ne4 de4 24. Rh7 Qd8 25. Qf5 Kc6 26. Bb5 Kb6 27. Qc5 Ka5 28. b4#]

 

20... Rf7 21. Qf7 Neg8 22. Rh8 dc4 23. Qe7#

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.