First Team Drew with Edinburgh 3

Crawford Macnab

13 November 2023

Second league match saw us face regular opponents Edinburgh 3 with both teams being close on grading.

Charles was first to finish and had a tough time defending a position with the black pieces where white had a space advantage. With neither side castling, white placed his king on e2 to allow rooks to reach the open h file. Black also uncastled could not find a similar safe space for his king and white concluded with a nice tactical sacrifice.

Ralph had a same colour bishop and pawn ending where both sides created protected passed pawns. This required both kings to watch these pawns and no progress could be made.

Matt had invested some pawns for some pressure against the black king but in the end black organised his pieces to counter this and a draw was agreed.

Richard went a pawn down and eventually reached a queen and knight ending. Unfortunately the queens and knights were swapped off and there was no chance of holding the pawn ending.

Allan had an interesting game with opposite side castling that looked like his attack with rooks aiming at the black kingside would prevail. The attack appeared to stall on the kingside and by some means later, Allan had a rook for a knight advantage with his opponent creating some attacking chances of his own. His opponent got into significant time trouble but did create threats of bank rank and smothered mates so Allan had to be very careful. In the end he kept a cool head to exploit his advantage and claim the full point.

Nathaniel had his first game for a while and claimed a fair bit of extra space with the white pieces. With material level his opponent had less space and some slightly awkwardly placed pieces. This allowed Nathaniel to increase the pressure and break through with some nice tactics. Both down to less than 5 minutes each, Nathaniel coolly avoided any stalemate to win his game and give us a 3-3 result.

	Edinburgh 3		Edinburgh 3		Civil Service 1
1	David Archibald	1833	½ - ½	Matt Rounds	1825
2	Robert Kane	1812	1 - 0	Charles Gunn-Russell	1763
3	Andre Antunes	1791	0 - 1	Allan McDiarmid	1751
4	Martin Bretjer	1672	1 - 0	Richard Scott	1692
5	Colin Hutchison	1663	0 - 1	Nathaniel Forbes Inskip	1655
6	Ian Sweeney	1410	½ - ½	Ralph Jackson	1651
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