There was drama late in the match in Leicester last night as stand-in captain Matt delivered checkmate in the dying seconds to put Latimer to the sword to secure Anstey 1’s first back-to-back win of the season and move the team to third in the division. Having now done the double over them this season maybe we can finally dismiss the idea of Latimer being our bogey team!
Despite the team being ravaged by injury with captain Ben and Boris out due to Covid, we outgunned our opponents by an average of 113 rating points per board. And had we put down our secret weapon Hal’s real grade of 1800 it would have been more of course. If only he remembered to bring a pen he could have been board 1!
The match conditions were a bit unusual; we had gone togged up prepared for the usual brass monkey temperature but someone had actually turned the heater on and it proved to be near tropical! Matt almost fainted at one point and poor old Mick was right under the heater and he was sweating cobs!
We started the match well. After half an hour John stood up from board 1 and folded up his scoresheet, we all assumed he had agreed a Grandmaster draw but no, his opponent had tried something new in the opening that had completely backfired and he was lost before he blundered his queen on move 12. 1 – 0.
Soon after Mike’s opponent resigned after struggling to deal with our board 5’s classy English opening. Mike took control on the queenside eventually pushing pawns forward inexorably before breaking through and winning a rook on the eighth rank. 2 – 0.
Hal finished next. He came out of the opening with a small positional disadvantage which his opponent maintained throughout the game. Hal tried to avoid his nemesis rook and pawn ending by swapping them off but it came down to a bishop and three pawns vs knight and four very strong pawns and Hal capitulated, not even offering his trademark draw sign. 2 – 1.
Mick then agreed a draw. After a very sharp Italian Game opening the tactics continued long into the middle game before slightly petering out. Mick knew a draw would push us closer to the match win so agreed to the draw. 2½ – 1½.
Julian had his opponent on the ropes with a strong kingside attack. His opponent defended well but was still under the cosh when he offered a cheeky draw. This seemed to fluster Julian a bit but taking in the match position (Matt seemed to be winning easily on board 4) he took one for the team and took the draw. 3 – 2.
So, this just left Matt. After a cagey opening Matt provoked his opponent to play b4 which weakened his queenside, Matt was able to build up some pressure on the c file and after an exchange of pieces to relieve the pressure his opponent blundered his bishop on b2. He then sacrificed a pawn in the hope of a bank rank cheapo but then lost another as Matt’s queen dined on white pawns. The pawn sac did open up the f file though and with queens and rooks still on the board gave white a few chances especially with Matt a bit low on time. Matt went into defensive mode which with hindsight may not have been the best plan. After a massive time scramble (down to 2 seconds on his clock at one point apparently giving onlookers Julian, Mick and Hal near heart attacks) and white throwing his kingside pawns and his king(!) into the attack Matt manged to trap the white king on the side of the board with a nice checkmate. Phew! 4 – 2.
Overall a great team effort which sets us up nicely for the rest of the season.
Match report by Matt Connor
Anstey Chess Club 
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