Playing Loughborough yet again with a similar team, as last time we had Noor, Mike and myself playing against Loughborough. This time we’ve got Yuvraj and Bob playing with myself, Mike and Noor. Not much of an eventful start. The venue for the Loughborough club normally opens at about 7:30pm, so there’s a bit of a rush to get all the boards set up. Once everything is set up, it’s time to start playing!

Photo credited to Noor’s dad, which was taken just after the games started.

Board 1: Bob Grindrod plays white; Ben Carpenter-Friend plays black

The game starts with what looks to be a kings indian defence at first, but then black plays d5 on his third move, which turns this into a grunfeld defence. Bob plays this like a queen’s gambit with connected d and e pawns with a c pawn attacking black’s centre. Although, the game starts to get zesty as black plays c5 counter attacking white’s d pawn. A couple of trades occur and black moves his queen to a5 to retake on c5. Bob mis calculates the position and plays e4, which falls into black’s favour as Ben takes on e4 with his knight. Bob’s knight is pinned to his queen by the black queen. To try to counter this Bob attacks Ben’s queen, but Ben goes down a forcing line with exchanges the queens off the board, but leaves black up two pawns.

Bob does manage to castle and develop his bishops, but they are stuck on the edge of the board not really doing a lot. Black starts advancing his pawns on the queen side and Bob tries to create counter play for himself, but black shuts this down and locks the queenside for a few moves before black rotates his knight to force Bob to move his light bishop and forcing a Bob to trade his bishop for a knight. In an open position with no bishops is quite bad for white, as black still has a bishop, which are regarded as snipers of the chess board. A couple of moves later a Bob blunders a bishop skewer of his knight and rook. Bob chooses to keep his knight alive and take two pawns in exchange for the rook, but Bob throws in the towel as black forces a rook trade, which would leave Bob in a rookless end game with a knight against black’s bishop and rook.

Loughborough 1 – Anstey 0. Bob not having a good streak of games over the last month, but with losses comes experience and knowledge. I’m sure there’s a win somewhere down the line for Bob.

Board 2: Peter Hickman plays white; Mike Griffiths plays black

The game starts off with d4 d5 and e3 e6 with some piece development on both sides. White ends up with a stone wall kind of set up with f4 being played and Mike ends up with a queens gambit set up that would normally occur when playing white. A few moves later Peter has castled and Mike trades his c pawn and develops his dark bishop. Mikes also castles and white plants his knight on e5 with the support of his f and d pawns. Whilst Mike reroutes his knights Peter starts throwing his kingside pawns towards Mike’s king, which is quite weakening but it is a fairly closed position so there is a chance that white’s king is fairly safe. Mike trades knights and white ends up with connect 4. Mike then hits the head of the pawn link with f6 and trades the pawns off, then Mike trades the knights off and further improves his position before starting to make trades with white.

Firstly, Mike trades the dark bishops, then he chooses to trade off one of his rooks and then Mike brings his last rook into the fight. Peter decides to trade the last of the rooks off the board and offers a queen trade, which Mike doesn’t mind but he plays g5 first. After this both players agree to a draw.

Loughborough 1 1/2 – Anstey 0 1/2. Mike does seem to like his draws.

Board 3: Noor “The Prodigy” Datoo plays white; Keir Hayden plays black

The game starts as an italian with black developing both his knights, then Noor develops his queenside knight but black executes the centre fork trick, which means black took Noor’s only centre pawn, Noor retook with a knight and black played d5 to fork the c4 bishop and knight on e4. Noor takes the d5 pawn with his bishop and retreats his knight to c3 which attacks the now advanced black queen. Keir retreats his queen and plays bishop g4, which pins Noor’s knight to his queen. Black castles queenside, Noor develops his last minor piece and Noor captures black’s advanced knight on d5, which offers a queen trade. Black doesn’t refuse this offer, but takes one of white’s knights instead and then takes white’s queen.

The game continues with both players dancing black’s light bishop with white’s knight across the queenside. Black develops his last minor piece and Noor castles. Noor starts to march his queenside pawns towards black’s king, but Keir stops this by counter attacking Noor’s pawns and Noor engages in a pawn trade. Noor also offers a dark bishop trade which black does accept, and protects his b pawn with his black rook. Noor attempts to double rooks but black refuses to let this happen and advances his b pawn to attack white’s knight. Noor moves his knight back but Keir keeps advancing his pawn right in front of Noor’s rook. Noor simply places his knight back to c3 and continues to double rooks.

Black tries to counter attack Noor’s protected e pawn, but Noor simply captures black’s over-extended b pawn and captures the other pawn with check. Black advances his other rook into Noor’s position and pins the white knight to the only white rook. Noor tries to advance his kingside pawns, but black pushes in the centre. Although, his opens up a rook trade for Noor as he moves his knight and both rooks stare at each other, but if black takes the white rook Noor can fork the rook and king. Quite the fancy manoeuvre, but this is in black’s favour as the computer says it’s -4 for Keir. However, black takes the wrong way and ends up trading a rook for a knight, so if black traded rooks he would’ve been winning as he would have a past pawn. This version of the game doesn’t allow black a past pawn, and Noor is now winning with +2.6 as the computer evaluation. At this point, Keir cheekily offered Noor a draw, which Noor instantly declined.

In the next few moves, Noor simply advanced his rook to the black side and started cutting down black’s pawns with check, and once he did that he aimed his rook at the black bishop which was defending a pawn that stopped Noor’s c5 pawn from queening. There wasn’t much that black could do, as Noor advanced his passed g pawn and black could not stop both pawns from queening. Noor sacrificed his rook for the bishop and pushed his c pawn, and all black could do was resign.

Loughborough 1 1/2 – Anstey 1 1/2!

Board 4: Michael Bordiak plays white; Yuvraj “The Silent Destroyer” Sadhra plays black

The game starts with white playing the london system, and Yuvraj plays symmetrically and a mirrored position occurs on the board on move 6, but on move 7 white plays h4 and Yuvraj plays queen to a5. Michael develops his queen to the queenside as well, and both players trade a pawn and a piece. Black then puts more pressure on white’s pinned knight, which white deals with by castling. Yuvraj takes the c3 knight and again on c3 as white retakes with his queen. Black castles and white trades pawns and Yuvraj retakes with his knight. Both players continue to develop their pieces and improve upon their positions, but suddenly Yuvraj takes white’s weak c pawn and it’s sufficiently protected. Yuvraj mistakenly took on c3 and is now down a piece!

Black continues to gently improve his position and double rooks on the open c file, which white occupies with one rook. This plays into quite the plot twist as white moves his king to f2, which blunders a rook! What on earth is going on?! Such a crazy start to the game. The computer is taking a rollercoaster ride by evaluating the position as +4 for white only a few moves ago, but now it’s -4 for Yuvraj!

Afterwards, the game continues with Yuvraj’s rook getting behind enemy lines and assisting black pawn marches down the kingside. White tries to harass the black rook with his bishops (white’s only remaining pieces), but Yuvraj simply moves his rook out the way and into a safe spot. White tries to create some play on the kingside too, but it falls flat when black counters the counterplay. White tries to attack with his king, but black uses his king to solidify the position and white struggles to defend against black’s free resigning rook. After a bit of “pawn grabbing” Yuvraj now has two passers on the queenside, and white can try to hold off the avalanching pawns but eventually Michael will have to sacrifice his bishop and black will be completely winning.

The game finishes just as white tries to stop the a pawn from promoting and black pins the white bishop to white’s king. Michael resigns leaving Yuvraj the silent victor of the game.

Loughborough 1 1/2 – Anstey 2 1/2!

Board 5: Oskar Rudczenko plays white; Stuart Gordon plays black

The game starts off as a closed sicilian with both players developing their knights and white pinning black’s knight to his queen. Black then plays queen to a5 which dodges the pin and pins one of white’s knights. A big trade then occurs in the middle of the board where Oskar sacrifices a knight in exchange for another one of black’s knight and as the dust settles white’s queen is on d4 and black has no g pawn and doubled f pawns. Black shoos white’s queen away from the centre and white tries to castle queenside. Luckily, before castling, black plays bishop h6 which would have skewered the white king and queen, so Oskar simply moves his queen out the way and attempts to castle kingside instead. Stuart struggles to know what to do and tries to lift his rook up and fianchetto his light bishop to castle queenside.

At this point, Oskar missed that he could’ve trapped black’s queen with b4, and only sees it after he grabs a pawn, but the computer evaluates that Oskar is winning by +3.5. Stuart sees that his queen can be trapped and moves the queen out into fresher air before castling queenside. However, Oskar mounts up the pressure as he doubles his queen and rook on the d file targeting black’s backward d pawn. Black defends well, but Oskar keeps going forwards with b4 and knight to d5 with check. Stuart tries to poke at the white position, but Oskar defends well himself and black trades off the powerful knight helping Oskar to make connect four on the queenside.

Stuart tries to break up the connect four with b5, but Oskar gladly takes the pawn as this opens the c file for his rooks and queen. The computer evaluation is now +6.5. Oskar brings his rooks and queen to the c file immediately and makes alekhine’s gun, which is where the queen teams up with both rooks on one file of the board. Black tries to make counter play, but Oskar wins black’s bishop, so now black has a queen and a rook vs a rook, bishop and queen. It is +10! Black starts to grab pawns and tries to make counter play. Oskar makes room for his king and sets up a trap to win black’s queen, but Oskar doesn’t realise his rook hangs, and now the evaluation goes from +63 to -5. Oskar tries to stay in the game, but there’s not much he can do as black threatens checkmate, and the only thing Oskar can do is sacrifice his queen to avoid the checkmate. A devastating blunder; one that Oskar will feel for a while.

Loughborough 2 1/2 – Anstey 2 1/2; the final result is a draw.

Final Words

It’s another draw for Anstey 3, which is not what we’re looking for but it is not a loss at least. At the moment the third Anstey team are still in the middle of the div four league table in 6th place out of 9, which is not too bad still as a couple of wins will get us in the upper half of the leaderboard and possibly in the top 3 of the division! All I can say for my team is it’s been a good hustle so far and we can make it into the top half of the division! I believe that we have the potential as players and as a team!

The next match Anstey 3 have will be against Melton Mowbray 3 on the 23rd February and Melton are in last place of division four, so we can beat them! We have 6 matches left and 4 of those are against teams in the bottom half of the division, so the future looks promising for the third Anstey team!

See you all after the 23rd, and thanks very much for reading!