First team lose to University 1

Crawford Macnab

18 January 2023

We travelled to the pleasance to play University of Edinburgh 1st team in our 5th league match.

This was a close match that could have gone either way but in the end we lost 2 - 4 to drop our first points this season.

We were outgraded on the top 4 boards with the University bottom two boards being ungraded.

My opponent was a Women International Master who didn’t know the line I played in the Morra Gambit against her Sicilian Dragon. I wasted a lot of time trying to recall the fine details of this line but chose a reasonable continuation that gave good play for the gambited pawn. In the end I ran out of time having missed the best way to maintain the tension.

Allan, Charles, Ralph, and Euan all had well fought draws.

Richard was last to finish and had a tough challenge with king, two bishops and passed rook pawn against king, rook and knight. His opponent was low on time but managed to exchange rook for bishop and pawn to leave his knight against bishop to force a decisive pawn advantage on the queen side.