Captain Maks reports:

Kingston, having already practically won the league, turned out with a strong team with 2380+ players on the top two boards and the rest of their team around 2000.

Our own team was a bit short on players the night before and Victor and George kindly stepped in to help out on boards 5 and 6. I have to say I was quite pleased with their performance. Victor played a Slav-Schlechter setup against an English and traded down to an opposite colour bishop ending with rooks getting a solid draw. George on board 6 was also quite solid, getting to an equal ending early against his higher rated opponent. His only mistake really was trading a piece at the wrong moment opening a file that he wasn’t in time to contest with his own rooks. A nasty rook on the seventh led to a paralyzed position and a loss.

As for the other games, the only positive result we got was my own game on board 4. My opponent played the Benoni which as an opening has a risky reputation. It drifted to a position where he was either losing a pawn or the exchange which might still be playable. However, he made things worse by trading a piece and developing my bishop to point at f7.

Here’s the first half of the game. Click on any move for a pop-up window.

For our top 3 boards we got wiped out with 3 losses, although on boards 1 and 2 we were very close to getting results. John on board 2 actually had a completely winning position, but accidently left a whole rook hanging in severe time pressure. Perhaps even more frustrating for John was that there was perpertual check that could have been taken right before the blunder. 

Here again is the game.

Maxim on board 1 had a level position for a long way, but, in severe time trouble, captured the wrong pawn, after which his IM opponent’s passed pawn was too strong. Chris’s game on board 3 may have been a bit one-sided against Chris who was defending as black in the ruy lopez mainline.  

So overall, considering John’s game we probably should have closed the gap in the score to at least 2.5 – 3.5 and with Maxim’s game being close this could have put us over the line, scoring some league points.