It has been a difficult season this year for the second team. Prior to our last encounter with Melton Mowbray 3, we found ourselves at the bottom of the table in division 4 of the Leicestershire chess league with only one draw and 5 losses. The trip to our neighbours’ venue in the beautiful town famous for their amazing pork pies, was crucial for our second team’s confidence and position in the league.

In the blistering cold on 12th January we were heading for Melton Mowbray’s chess club with the intention to play a five-board match when we received the news that Leo was not able to make it. Already scheduled five boards, our team started on the back foot, with Leo’s game lost by default.

The first person from our team to stand up from the board was Mike. As the top-rated player within the squad during the match, he took on our opponents top-rated player and after a solid positional game they agreed to a draw.

On board 3 Boris made his debut for our second team after months of deliberation. As usual, he decided to take the path of a complicated tactical battle which ended in a draw with both him and his experienced opponent left with dangerous prospects for strong attacks which eventually cancelled each other.

On the second board, Hal showed again why he is the new class act of the second team. With his opponent making a crucial mistake, Hal took the advantage and guided the game to a winning endgame. The infamously tricky ‘rook and pawn’ endgame proved to be hard test for Hal but he managed to keep the game solid and took advantage of another mistake by his opponent. This gave us hope as it led to a 2-2 result before the end of the last game.

Eventually, it all came down to our captain Oscar gradually took the reigns of the board and after about 30 moves he got his opponent in a pickle, with rook, pawns, bishop and king all under immense pressure and direct attacks. Eventually the play continued towards a winning endgame for Oscar when his opponent resigned. There could not have been any better end than our captain securing the win for our team.

We wish all our second team players good luck ahead and to keep it in the same spirit! The result place us in 7th position currently, with Melton Mowbray 3 having 3 more games to play.