First Team lost to Pentland Hills 1

Crawford Macnab

15 October 2024

First league match saw us get off to a poor start with an away loss to Pentland Hills.

Teams were close on grading and in general most games were quite close.

Eric perhaps had a bit more space and his opponent accepted an early draw.

Ralph went a pawn down and with chances to hold the draw for a while eventually succumbed to defeat.

Charles exploited his opponent going slightly wrong in a Ruy Lopez and found a tactic to win the b2 pawn with the white pieces behind in development. This proved decisive and Charles played accurately to avoid any efforts by his opponent to complicate.

Richard had a horrible game on the black side of a Gruenfeld Defence with his opponent castling kingside and rolling all kingside pawns forward. Whites position was so strong he could sacrifice material on the h file to force his attack through with minimum fuss.

My Smith Morra gambit went ok but black defended patiently and running low on time I over pressed with attack against the black king that did not quite work.

Matt had possibly a slight edge with the white pieces but had to spend some time reorganising his pieces. This allowed his opponent to improve his position and in the end Matt lost.

	Pentland Hills 1		Pentland Hills 1		Civil Service 1
1	Philip Best	1905	1 - 0	Matt Rounds	1876
2	Ian Morrison	1774	0 - 1	Charles Gunn-Russell	1751
3	Brendan Cornes	1754	1 - 0	Crawford Macnab	1696
4	David Begg	1669	1 - 0	Richard Scott	1657
5	Adam Dickinson	1663	½ - ½	Eric Smith	1589
6	Victor Thimonier	1592	1 - 0	Ralph Jackson	1592
				4½ - 1½