First team lost to Edinburgh 2

Crawford Macnab

4 March 2024

A tough match against Edinburgh 2 who have already won the league with a 100% record. (Congratulations to them!)

	Edinburgh 2		Edinburgh 2		Civil Service 1
1	Brian Whyte	2048	1 - 0	Charles Gunn-Russell	1763
2	Ross Blackford	1926	1 - 0	Allan McDiarmid	1751
3	Michael Ridge	1843	0 - 1	Crawford Macnab	1716
4	John Smith	1728	½ - ½	Richard Scott	1692
5	Berislav Marusic	1627	1 - 0	Nathaniel Forbes Inskip	1655
6	Keith Aitchison	1575	½ - ½	Euan McDiarmid	1616
				4 - 2

We were outgraded on the top boards but much closer on the bottom three boards.

Euan was first to finish with a draw with the black pieces where he had to take care to defend well against some pressure from white.

I played the Morra Gambit against Mike Ridge’s Sicilian Defence where he declined the gambit. I got my move order wrong and allowed him to chop my knight on c3 with his Bg7 to give him a long term plan to play against my doubled pawns. Despite this I had a small edge in development and pushed forward with e5 after he eventually castled. Rather than recapturing a pawn on e5 I played the zwischenzug Be4 and after black captured a second pawn on f4 my prospects improved significantly. A few moves later black had to drop the exchange to survive but instead his exposed king was mated!

Nathaniel had plenty of space and a good attack going against the black king with the g7 square looking weak. It looks like black defended well and the attack was repelled leaving two rooks against rook and bishop with Nathaniel’s king trapped on the back rank which allowed black to win the bishop or get a bank rank mate.

Charles had a tough game on board one but looked to be holding his own against a 2000+ player. Eventually he lost a pawn and his opponent made no mistake in the rook ending.

Allan had a good position and his junior opponent got in to severe time trouble and only just reached 34 moves without losing on time. When the smoke had cleared, Allan had two rooks against rook bishop and knight. This time the two minor pieces made it easier to play for white and Allan eventually lost.

Richard managed to go a pawn up in an ending where he had bishop and knight versus two bishops. This was a tough ending to win and eventually a draw was agreed with both players getting low on time in the quickplay. The engine perhaps will report if there was a way to make use of the extra pawn!