Report – 9 October 2009
School Alarm System closes club
Unfortunately the school’s alarm system was activated upon our entry to Room B6. This summoned a security guard, and then the alarm could not be de-activated and re-activated.
Consequently, the Security Guard requested we ‘call it a night’ and the six players not involved in the play-off match adjourned to The Gap Tavern.
Nathan – doing his best black faces routine (he either grew a beard or forgot to shave) – won the most games at the pool table.
Results on the pool table:
Nathan Shaw 1 Mark Taylor 0 (very lucky shot on the black)
Andrew Robinson 1 Nathan Shaw 0
Stuart Wilson Trophy
Maiden Trophy Play-Off Match result:
(played at Russell Lyon’s house)
Report by Gary Sands:
I was able to win my game with Russell which was a very good game - Neither of us made any really obvious blunders - In Russell’s words I just outplayed him.
Russell played the Dutch defence (f5) against my 1.d4. I managed to create an opening on the queenside which I was able to exploit to my advantage – I ended up with a fairly solid pawn centre and on move
20 was able to place a knight on the very nice outpost of d6 – deep in Russell’s territory. Russell sacrificed a knight for my pawn on e5 (on move 21) to try and open the position and to gain some counter-play
but I was able to limit any counter-play Russell might have had.
A little later on (move 28) Russell moved his queen pawn (which was guarded by a rook on d8) to d4 - this threatened my Bishop on c3 but he didn’t see an intermediate queen check from the c4 square to his king on g8
(which meant that I was threatening to win the pawn with my bishop now that it would be guarded by the queen). Russell interposed his queen on f7 which I captured with check.
Following the capture of my queen by Russell’s king I captured the queen rook pawn with my rook giving check with check – Russell was forced to recapture with his a8 rook as I had doubled rooks on the a file.
I recaptured Russell’s rook with my other rook (again with check) – Russell interposed his rook on d7 (otherwise he would have lost his h7 pawn) and I then traded off the rooks (move 35).
In the endgame the two main factors were that I was a Bishop up (due to Russell’s earlier knight sac) and I also had a passed b-pawn. Once I made sure Russell wasn’t able to promote any of his pawns I was able
to queen my b-pawn (move 50) and was able to give to give checkmate on the kingside a few moves later.
Quote of the night
“You should stick to chess” – Nathan, made upon James exhibiting limited dexterity with the cue at the pool table