First team beat Bank Of Scotland 2

Crawford Macnab

27 February 2024

An important win against the bottom of the league team who we outgraded on all boards.

	Bank Of Scotland 2		Bank Of Scotland 2		Civil Service 1
1	Findlay Murray	1661	0 - 1	Matt Rounds	1825
2	Stuart Bannatyne	1635	1 - 0	Allan McDiarmid	1751
3	David Stewart	1638	½ - ½	Crawford Macnab	1716
4	Alistair Forbes	1592	½ - ½	Ralph Jackson	1651
5	James Turner	1414	0 - 1	Eric Smith	1601
6	Graeme Russell	1405	0 - 1	Douglas Heatlie	1499
				2 - 4

Ralph had a slightly cramped position against Alistair Forbes who arguably had a slight edge with the white pieces. This being the case Ralph had little option but to accept the draw offer that was made.

Matt was pleased how his game went as he efficiently executed an attack against the black king. See the game below.

Douglas stepped up to play for the first team on bottom board and secured a good win agianst Graeme Russell. On this occasion the rook proved to be more effective than the bishop and knight.

Allan made use of a tactic to win whites a2 pawn with his queen. This proved to be an unwise choice as eventually it led to his queen being trapped and had to be given up for some material. Stuart Bannatyne made no mistake converting Q+B+Ps against R+R+Ps.

I played d4/c3 against David Stewarts Sicilian Defence which was risky as he knows this opening very well from both sides. The gambit was declined with 3..e5 defending the black pawn on d4. I had glanced at this line in my preparation and continued with Bc4, Qb3, Nf3-g5 to increase pressure on f7. It all looked quite promising but I just did not have enough pieces to force through with the attack. Eventually black safely castled and had a slight edge with his extra pawn. David was not sure how to make progress and after he repeated moves he accepted my draw offer.

This left us 3-2 up with just Eric’s game to finish on board 5.

This game had been very close with Eric having to carefully defend against white’s attack on his kingside. Just when it looked like James was about to relocate his knight to assist in the attack he blundered and a knight was lost. The resulting endgame still had some excitement when Eric calmly ignored a pawn advance that attacked his rook instead pushing his own pawn to the sixth rank. Given the placement of his opponents king and rook this pawn could not be prevented from queening with some support from his own king!

Special thanks to Eric and Douglas who played up as reserves with both securing wins!