Summer Cup - lost to Corstorphine

Crawford Macnab

24 June 2024

We won on the actual score (4 - 2) but lost on the handicap score (6½ - 4).

As we were higher graded by 200 points on every board we essentially had to win all our six games.

I was first to finish with a relatively quick win against my junior opponents caro-kann defence. With opposite side castling my h4 pawn offer was correctly initially declined but a few moves later was grabbed with bishop only to lose the bishop due to queen check on c4 with double attack. With black already having played f5, pushing the g pawn to g5 was too exposing for his king with queen and rook threatening mate on h7, whites attack just played itself.

Charles found himself with under developed queen side pieces and his exposed king drawn forward to e4 with all major pieces still on the board it was impossible to survive.

Allan had what looked like a drawn king, rook, knight and equal pawns endgame but needing to go for a win overreached and lost.

Paul had two knights for a rook which combined well to help push a passed pawn on the queenside.

João had extra pawns in a double rook endgame where his better placed king, rooks and passed central pawn was converted, taking care to avoid any awkward rook checks.

Andrew found himself down in material with a knight for a rook but managed to play actively creating mating threats and nudging his passed e pawn forward. Although his position was still losing he was able to turn the tables and with both sides promoting to get queens the major pieces all came off to give Andrew a winning pawn endgame. I don’t believe this conclusion had all been worked out ahead of time but it was a fitting end to a sterling fightback! (In the post-mortem, Andrew had missed an intermediate check on the white king that would have forced it on to a poorer square that would have ensured that Andrew’s pawn promoted to a queen with check)

	Corstorphine		Corstorphine		Civil Service
1	Jamie Hand	1555	1 - 0	Charles Gunn-Russell	1763
2	Brian Gourlay	1534	1 - 0	Allan McDiarmid	1751
3	Rishi Kumar		0 - 1	Crawford Macnab	1716
4	Bruce Douglas	1261	0 - 1	Paul Girdwood	1564
5	Angus Ruthven	1197	0 - 1	João Reis	1410
6	Jorgen Grondal		0 - 1	Andrew Wright	1280
				6½ - 4