First Team beat Edinburgh 4

Crawford Macnab

4 November 2024

Second league match saw us face the Edinburgh 4 team at home.

We were a bit stronger on paper but Edinburgh 4 are an improving team and beat us in last seasons final match.

Charles had a slight advantage with his major pieces controlling the open d file, but his opponent brought his king to e7 ready to challenge this file and with no obvious way forward a draw was agreed.

Allan had a poor game and lost some time with under developed pieces in the opening. Although he was only a pawn down after exchanges his opponent made no mistake finishing the game off.

Matt’s opponent appeared to have more space and good central control with the white pieces. Game looked well balanced but did not see what happened as Matt won.

Richard won a minor piece with a nice fork and simply had to take care to simplify things in the ending.

My game transposed to a French Advance, and with the centre locked my opponent consider leaving his king in the centre and launching all his king side pawns for an attack. Instead he castled and looked to exchange all rooks on the open c file that I had control of. I found that by playing Rc7 rather than exchanging rooks on c8 I was going to win one of his undefended minor pieces. (Bd7 or Ne7) He got two pawns for the piece but my active rook and knight were soon joined by my black square bishop to conclude the game.

In the final game Euan had a tricky ending with K+R+pair of doubled pawns against K+R. With the match already won and being ahead on time it was certainly worth continuing to see if the game could be won. In the end his opponent resigned just as his time run out. The consensus was that leading up to this there were moments where the game was drawn and moments where Euan was winning.

Good to get a win under our belt!

	Civil Service 1		Civil Service 1		Edinburgh 4
1	Matt Rounds	1876	1 - 0	John S R Smith	1712
2	Charles Gunn-Russell	1751	½ - ½	David T Wilson	1689
3	Allan McDiarmid	1750	0 - 1	Matthew Willder	1635
4	Crawford T Macnab	1696	1 - 0	Findlay Haddow	1612
5	Euan McDiarmid	1659	1 - 0	Harry Verhoef
6	Richard Scott	1657	1 - 0	David C Montgomery	1557
				4½ - 1½