Game no.1 for the First Team - a Loss...

Today, our club 'Didcot 1' faced off against very strong opponents, across all 6 boards our team's ratings were a couple hundred points lower than our opponents counterparts so we knew we were in for a very tough match.

I was down on board 6 playing with the black pieces and as soon as move 5 I knew I was facing a very strong opponent. I didn't know my opponents' actual rating but looked on the ECF database and found that he was graded 124 ECF (1642 FIDE equ.) back in 2002, there were no recent records but I was told he was over 150 ECF (1850+) at his peak by one of his team mates. He was a strong player, better than me, enough said - here's the game!

It was a shame I got into time-trouble and couldn't keep score until I got checkmated because I tried every trick in the book for a perpetual check lol but I was definately beaten by a better player and as a team, we were beaten by a better team - we lost 4-2 

I haven't run the game through Houdini yet to see if I actually missed a draw or was completely losing the whole way through...

But in 2 days time I have another game to play for my club, my usual spot on board 5 for the second team so hopefully I can get a win!