In the fourth and penultimate round of the Leicestershire Harrod Summer Cup, the second Anstey team travelled to their next opponents in Loughborough. Similar to the previous round of the Harrod cup, Loughborough and Anstey 2 were quite close on the scoreboard, as both had one win and two losses at the bottom of the board; Anstey 2 were in 10th Place and Loughborough were in 11th place. Not as much hanging in the balance when Anstey 2 faced off against Ashby 2, as both were place in the middle of the scoreboard. However, it would be beneficial to the team’s morale and inflated ego that they didn’t end up at the bottom in the last round of the cup.

The Anstey team consisted of Mike Griffiths, Leo Abraham, Oskar Rudczenko, and Deepa Kalyanji. Unfortunately, Deepa had not turned up during the entire evening due to unforeseen circumstances, which left Anstey with a two point disadvantage from the start, but the mighty chess players of Anstey were not going to back down and we stayed for a good evening of strategized board play.

Board 1 (Game 1) – Mike Griffiths plays white; John Glover plays black

Mike’s opponent was a total 159 ECF rating points above Mike, so Mike had to fight for a victory if he was hoping to win at least one match against John Glover. Mike opened with a usual English set up in the opening, Mike was seemingly more prepared than his opponent as Mike had over 17 minutes of his time left on the clock, whereas John had no time left. It was quite an “uninteresting match” as Mike had put it, with equal material on the board for both sides. Mike’s opponent was quite stunned that he lost on time as he was over-heard talking about his defeat, to a fellow Loughborough club member, by one or two of the Anstey players.

Board 1 (Game 2) – John plays white; Mike plays black

The second game between the two board 1 players was quite a bit more eventful. John opened with d4, and Mike opened with a quite interesting c5 Sicilian opening. Immediately, there was potential for the position to erupt, and open up violently. Later on in the game, Mike had said he “tempted” his opponent to take a three piece exchange and John accepted this trade offer, confident that he had the upper hand on Mike. However, Mike had a tactic up his sleeve with a simple knight check after taking John’s rook, and this switched the tempo of the position in Mike’s favour and Mike used this to trade off even more pieces, but it was trading in his favour. Mike had gained a rook and a pawn for only a bishop. Mike managed to keep the tempo and material he had gained from this exchange, and he turned his position into a won game. John eventually resigned with one move away from being certainly checkmated, and with that result the score between Anstey and Loughborough was 2-2. A solid start from the Anstey team, but this was only the start of the chaos.

Board 2 (Game 1) – Leo Abraham plays white; Ric Dawson plays black

Leo had one of the biggest challenges of the evening, as he was playing against an opponent, who was over 200 rating points higher than Leo was. Although, Leo is a very good player, considering his current rating and he has pulled victory against the odds on many occasions.

The game opened with e4 and e5, and as the game progressed the position was as equal as Mike’s first game. Leo would try to poke at his opponent’s position from time to time, trying to either find or provoke some sort of weakness. As the game progressed Leo pushed an initiative on the kingside of the board, and he attacked with good progress as the black kingside opened up as Leo took more pawns. Leo traded off a few more of his pieces and pressed the attack, for he had the tempo to do so. Towards the end of the game Leo turned his tempo into a winning position, and of course won against Ric Dawson. Although, with one more to play, the match between these two was far from over.

Board 2 (Game 2) – Ric plays white; Leo plays black

This next game was a bit more of a close shave. The game started as the first game had, with e4 and e5 being the first moves of each player. A few moves later, Leo had pinned Ric’s knight to his king and Leo won the piece almost for free. Although Leo was a piece up, the position was not in his favour so Leo had to keep fighting for the winning chances he was looking for. As more pieces were developed, Leo managed to improve his position in a slow but sure fashion, and later on Leo was attacking similarly to how he had attacked his opponent in the previous game: attacking on the kingside of the board. Since Leo’s opponent had castled on the kingside, Leo created some significant threats of checkmating Ric; the more threats Leo made, the more pressure his opponent was under. Soon enough, Leo’s threats encouraged Ric to make some mistakes and Leo took full advantage of these mistakes, which cost Ric one or two more blundered pieces. After realising that he was in some deep do-do, Ric accepted his bad position and resigned against Leo, making the score of this match 2-0 to Leo. The score between the two teams was now 2-4 to Anstey, which put the team in a great position to win, and to get higher on the cup’s scoreboard. There were still drawing chances for the Loughborough team, so there was still some caution to be had.

Board 3 (Game 1) – Oskar Rudczenko plays white; Stewart Gordon plays black

With winning chances looking good for Anstey, there wasn’t too much pressure on Oskar to assure the victory, but where there is hope there are still chances, and Loughborough still had some chances to draw the match. Oskar was out rated by 145 ECF points, not as much as Mike or Leo was but still out rated by quite a lot of points. Although, similarly to Leo, Oskar was playing much better than his rating would suggest.

The first game on board 3 started with a d4 and d5, followed by a bishop out and a black knight attacking the unprotected d4 pawn. Oskar moved e3 resulting in a London system set up. As the game progressed, Oskar had to deal with a pinned knight and the potential pressure his opponent could put onto the knight. However, the pressure was not enough to create significant danger, so there were a few exchanges with not much advantage being gained by either side. Further along in the game, Stewart seemed to get a little impatient with the position as he pushed one of his kings pawns to attack one of the white pieces, although, Stewart had already castled so this was risky for him to do. Oskar developed and improved his position around this sudden aggression, and winning chances started to occur within the position.

Black was trying to attack on the kingside but white had not castled yet, so what was it that black was attacking? Nevertheless, black continued the attack, and had helped white to open the h file for white. As queens were traded off the board and the black king wide open, white’s chances of winning became clearer and clearer. Oskar had doubled his rooks on the h file and he started to threaten checkmate, and that’s exactly what had happened. The score became 2-5 in Anstey’s favour, and any drawing chances had evaporated.

Board 3 (Game 2) – Stewart plays white; Oskar plays black

The second game opened with an e4 and e5, and Stewart opened with a Ruy Lopez. The game continued with not many pieces getting traded off, but with Oskar’s position getting a little crammed and tight. Although, there were a few tactics that were on the board, one of which being a bishop skewer on white’s rook and queen for black to play, Oskar just had to be patient for white to move his knight. A few moves later, the knight had moved and the bishop moved into position. White gave an in-between move, which resulted in a knight trade, and, after the dust settled, black had gained a rook for a bishop, but the game was still not over, as this was a closer game than any of the Anstey team had wanted it to get.

With both queens being traded off and the position looking equal, Stewart kept attacking Oskar with some success, defending off black’s attacks and creating some good attacks of his own. However, white’s pieces were slightly over worked, and with this in mind Oskar took some pawns as white took some pawns back, but this wasn’t good for black since white had an outside past pawn and it was rather close to promoting. Oskar had to trade a rook for a knight to deflect white’s only bishop from the outside passer. With the pawn taken, white then placed his bishop to attack the black rook, but black then pinned the white bishop to the white rook. After added pressure on the bishop, white decided to trade the rook for a bishop and a pawn, but Oskar still had some tactics left in him as he skewered the active white king and a free pawn. Moving his king to protect the pawn, Stewart didn’t see a brutal winning move in the form of a second check. Oskar found it and played it, forking the king and bishop and with no way to protect his king and bishop, Stewart resigned. A fantastic 2-6 win for Anstey.

Final Conclusions

With the result of the match being 2 for Loughborough and 6 for Anstey, this puts Anstey 2 at sixth place on the Harrod Cup leader board, leaving Loughborough behind in 11th place on the table. The incredible players in Anstey are still showing themselves to be as formidable as the spirit they fight with, and that’s not just in the second team. The next match will be against Ashby 1, which may be a hard match to win as their board one is a 1700 rated player, along with a few 1600 and 1500 rated players, but Anstey 2 have beaten similar rated opponents before. There’s only one way to find out who will win between Anstey’s and Ashby’s second teams.