Edinburgh West 2 vs Badgers Brook
Edinburgh West 2 1 - 5 Badgers Brook
Well done to all.
I must admit that I am a bit disapointed with the level of organisation from our opponents tonight. When we arrived there were only two of their players who were on time and ready to play. Three more strolled in at different times and their board order was a farcical mess. They defaulted board 4. The guy I was playing on board 1 should have been playing on their board 3, their board 3 should have been playing me and their board 2 didn't know where he should be! I don't think I have ever seen such a mess. I still don't know for sure who their captain was but I presume it was their board 6 guy who came in late having thought the match was due to start at 1930 instead of the actual start time of 1915 (he would still have been late for the 1930 start anyway).
Anyway, rant over: it's just a bit irritating and especially disapointing for Robert McCord who didn't even get to play.
From what I saw of the games Dave McGilvary won quickly and easily after his opponent blundered heavy material. (Two Bishops I think).
Paul Kowtun demonstrated why his performance grade has been so good lately after beating another higher graded player. The guy he was playing should have been their board 1 (graded 1450 mark). Paul was down the exchange for a large part of the game but had two very lethal supported past pawns which more than made up for it. I am not sure if the past pawns were engineered by an exchange sac or if it was just a co-incidence, post your game Paul! Paul did end up making it a bit harder than it needed to be but the final result was rarely in any doubt.
David Marshall won a pretty remarkable game too. Firstly his opponent claimed that it was a draw due to a repeated position (which it clearly wasn't). His initial thought was that because he had moved his King to and from the same squares three times that it meant it was a repeated position. What he failed to realise was that it's only a repeated position if the position is actually the same: and it wasn't. Dave had moved his Queen onto different squares and captured a pawn in the process. No fuss was made about it as the players quickly got back down to business. I thought the game was going to end fairly quickly as David was up by a Bishop but he then went on to refuse the capture of the opponent's Queen free of charge... three times LOL! David thought it would be stalemate but it wasn't close to stalemate. It didn't make any difference to the outcome though as David finally finished his opponent off and a point is a point!
Board 6 was their only win. Robert Liddle seemed to get himself into a pretty cramped position early on and struggled to find any play. I didn't see too much else of this game except that his opponent almost screwed it up by saccing his material advantage to remove Robert's final Rook, not realising that it only left him a single pawn up and the win required much more work than it needed initially.
My game was fairly straightforward. My opponent never really started out as if he thought he had a chance of winning. He made some serious positional errors with his Knight which allowed me to infiltrate his position and close out easily. Game below.
