2nd Draw against Edinburgh 3

Crawford Macnab

19 February 2024

Another closely drawn match for the first team against Edinburgh 3.

	Civil Service 1		Civil Service 1		Edinburgh 3
1	Matt Rounds	1825	1 - 0	Robert Kane	1812
2	Charles Gunn-Russell	1763	0 - 1	Andre Antunes	1791
3	Allan McDiarmid	1751	1 - 0	Chris McIntee	1758
4	Richard Scott	1692	0 - 1	Martin Bretjer	1672
5	Nathaniel Forbes Inskip	1655	0 - 1	Colin Hutchison	1663
6	Euan McDiarmid	1616	1 - 0	Ian Sweeney	1410
				3 - 3

Euan had better placed major pieces and probed well before delivering a mating finish.

Matt was back on form with a strong win with the black pieces on the top board.

Richard appeared to be doing ok but his king came under a strong attack with bishop and queen on the light squares and had no option but to bring his king to the centre in to a mating net.

Nathaniel had some awkwardly placed pieces with his rook and bishop on the bank rank that led to the bishop being lost with no compensation.

Allan looked to have a complicated game and I think was rook for minor piece exchange down. Despite this his knights and queen worked very well to penetrate in behind the exposed white king. In the end white returned material but could not salvage the result.

This left us 3-2 up with just Charles game to finish.

This was a tricky endgame with black having bishop and knight and pawns with Charles having a bishop but some extra pawns. Although Charles was ahead on time he spent some of this trying to make best use of his two advanced pawns that looked like they could possibly queen or at least force black to sacrifice one of the minor pieces. In the end with only two seconds left Charles stopped his clock and claimed a draw. Unfortunately the draw was not justified and the game was declared lost. With hindsight Charles should possibly have given up his bishop for blacks last pawn and force his opponent to prove he could mate with bishop and knight with less than two minutes on the clock!