The quiet before the storm. Not a lot happened before the matches started. Oskar helped to set up the boards with the Kirby players, and some people were slightly late getting to the venue as it can be quite hard to find and traffic can be a nightmare. Nonetheless, everyone made it to the match and everyone was able to play a solid game of chess.

It isn’t necessary for Anstey 3 to win this, but it would be great as we have drawn most of our matches and have stayed in the middle of the leader board for the whole season. The Kirby Castlers were not doing very well throughout the whole season staying at near the bottom of the board, so it would be ideal for Anstey to win as this would help to maintain our position in 5th place.

Board 1: Mike Griffiths plays white; John Walker plays black

Mike started off with the english and the game proceeds as a king’s english variation where white fianchetto’s the king’s bishop. Mike launches b4 onto the board along with a4 and then b5. White’s knight and black’s light bishop get traded off. Black takes the b5 pawn and Mike retakes, which now allows the c file to be fully open. Both players make small positional improvements and they trade knight for knight. Mike keeps his fianchettoed bishop, which now slices through the board. Black offers a queen trade, which is considered a blunder by the computer, and Mike takes the queen trade. I suppose this is a blunder because of how powerful Mike’s bishop is and he has control of the only open file for rooks to use, which Mike takes full advantage of and wins a pawn. Black decides to trade a pair of rooks and Mike keeps control of the open file and keeps his very strong bishop.

Both players fidget around with their pawns a little bit, again making small positional improvements to control certain squares. Mike then attacks black’s centralised dark bishop and a centre pawn, black trades pawns and Mike offers a dark squared bishop trade, which black accepts. Black then places his rook on the c file in front of Mike’s light squared bishop, which blockades the c file. Although, this allows Mike to gain a very advanced past pawn on the a file, and black stops this briefly but Mike finds the best moves and black can’t stop the pawn from queening. Black resigns.

Board 2: Nigel Wollen plays white; Bob Grindrod plays black

Bob starts with a french defence and it turns into the exchange variation. Bob fianchetto’s his dark squared bishop and castles king side. Both players make improving moves and white offers a trade of dark bishops, which Bob doesn’t act on and white chooses to trade bishops. Both players continue to make small improving moves. White trades off a knight for a knight, and again both players continue to make small improving moves before Bob offers another trade of pieces, this time offering a light squared bishop for a light squared bishop. White immediately takes it. Bob then blockades the only open file (the e file) with a knight. White dances his knight around the board, and while the white knight dances Bob makes more improving moves.

White trades off knights and Bob retakes with a rook, and white doesn’t want to trade rook for rook so he makes Bob trade rooks. The e file remains open and Bob makes sure that white can’t take advantage of it by placing his king close to the file in case white forces a queen trade. A couple more improving moves later, Bob tries to gain some control of the e file with his rook contesting the white rook on e1. White threatens a pawn capture, but Bob defends. Both players agree to a draw. Upon analysis, both players had played over 90% accuracy according to the chess.com game review feature.

Board 3: Noor “The Prodigy” Datoo plays white; Charlie Clynick plays black

Noor starts off the game as an Italian and the game proceeds as a two knights italian. Noor makes a small inaccuracy and allows d5, which Noor has to take otherwise he loses a pawn. Black retakes with the f3 knight and Noor trades light squared bishop for the knight. Noor tries to get rid of black’s centralised queen with c4, but this allows black to check Noor’s king with the dark squared bishop. Noor has to block with his queenside knight and Noor castles getting rid of the pin. Black trades bishop for knight and black applies more pressure to Noor’s position by attacking Noor’s vulnerable d3 pawn. Noor pushes the pawn to d4 but black castles queenside and once again threatens to win a pawn. Noor again pushes his pawn to d5, but black continues with knight to a5 attacking the c4 pawn. Noor defends and attacks the knight with queen to a4, black defends the knight with his b pawn.

Noor tries to protect one of the doubled c pawns with his rook, but black again attacks Noor’s pawns this time with a skewer of pawn and rook. Noor is forced to give up a pawn, but he pushes the c pawn to attack black’s queen an black takes the pawn on d5. Noor tries to pin black’s bishop to the black queen with one of his rooks, black offers a queen trade but Noor refuses and moves his queen. Black advances his e pawn to attack Noor’s knight. Noor moves his knight and defends with his dark squared bishop which also blockades the open d file. At this point Noor is in quite an unpleasant position and the odds are against him, but black blunders and allows either Noor’s knight to take the light squared bishop or for Noor’s c pawn to take on b6. Either of these moves would bring the game back to also equal, unfortunately Noor doesn’t see these moves and the advantage remains in black’s favour.

However, black makes a couple of positional blunders in a row and the advantage changes greatly in Noor’s favour! Noor manages to force black’s queen away from an undefended knight and Noor wins a piece! An amazing turn around for Noor and an amazing spot. Noor continues to attack and make some small positional changes to make it easier for him to attack black’s vulnerable king. Noor does make a couple more inaccuracies, but nothing too significant to allow black back in the game. Although, Noor keeps making inaccuracies and eventually he makes a positional blunder by allowing black to push a pawn to e2. Noor continues to try to rip apart black’s king with pawns, but Noor sacs a rook in the process and now has a bishop for a rook.

A few moves later Noor realises the trouble he’s in and he resigns when a checkmate in inevitable. An unfortunate loss for Noor, but it was against a very strong and underrated opponent. Both players looking like they will be 1700 in the future or even higher, and it was a spectacle of a game where both players had chances and it wasn’t such a straight forward game.

I shall put a link to the game here (https://www.chess.com/a/JmiFkdDxJdyp?tab=analysis) in case any readers wish to analyse it.

Board 4: Dan Watson plays white; Yuvraj “The Silent Detroyer” Sadhra plays black

The game starts as an italian and develops into a giuoco piano game. White chooses to pin Yuvraj’s knight to the queen and white trades the bishop for the knight as Yuvraj plays h6. Yuvraj centralises a knight on d4 and white counter attacks with knight to b5, and Yuvraj retreats his queen to d8 to deal with the threat of losing a rook. White gets rid of Yuvraj’s central knight by playing c3 and Yuvraj chooses to take white’s knight on f3. White recaptures with his queen, which means his queen and bishop are threatening mate in 1. Now Yuvraj of course sees this and defends it by playing c6, which attacks the b5 knight. Black gets scarred of losing the knight so he plays knight to a3, which misses mate in 1. Yuvraj now defends against mate once again by playing queen b6, which does defend against mate but it allows white to force Yuvraj to move his king without castling.

White then traps Yuvraj’s bishop and Yuvraj fires back by hitting white’s bishop. White take Yuvraj’s bishop but Yuvraj has to move his queen and Yuvraj is unable to retake, so he is down a piece. White increases the pressure on Yuvraj by lining up a rook to black’s king and Yuvraj pawn grabs with check. Black does the same later on, and white castles 22 moves into the game. Yuvraj lines up his rooks to white’s king and attacks once more with his light squared bishop, meaning white has to move his pawn forward, but white plays g4 which allows Yuvraj to sac his bishop for a devastating attack. White doesn’t retake and runs his king back to the centre of the board. Yuvraj keeps on attacking and checking, and a few moves later black blunders his queen with check, and white resigns.

Board 5: Oskar Rudczenko plays white; Nigel Smith plays black

Oskar starts with the scotch game, and black centralises his knight but Oskar attacks with his f pawn and black puts his knight back to c6. This gives Oskar more tempo and a bigger space advantage, but black does fire back by putting pressure on Oskar’s centre pawns. Oskar retreats to defend the pawns and castles queenside. Black’s knight lunges forwards to g4 attacking Oskar’s dark squared bishop, but Oskar finds a nice tactic to avoid giving up the bishop for a knight, and forces black’s knight to move to h6 where is it trapped. Black castles queenside too, and Oskar encourages a knight for bishop trade leaving Oskar with two bishops and black has a dark squared bishop with a still trapped knight.

Black pushes his pawn forward to d5 and Oskar takes with his e pawn, but this allows for a very good move from black where Oskar is almost forced to accept a queen trade and lose a piece. However, Oskar has an intermezzo where he forks black’s rooks with his bishop. Black trades queens and takes a free bishop, but Oskar takes a free rook. After the exchanges, Oskar keeps black’s h6 knight out of the game with g4, which makes f7 and g8 the only squares for the knight. Oskar checks the black king and forks two pawns with his rook on the 7th rank. Black defends the c pawn but not the h pawn, which means Oskar can take the h pawn and a free knight. Black tries to make some counter play with checks and tries to go for a few tactics to win a piece, but Oskar avoids blunders and still is up a significant amount of material. Oskar then delivers a forced mate in 3.

Board 6: Edda Walker plays white; John Graham-Brown plays black

This game starts off as a petrovs three knights defence, but in a very strange move order with knight to c3 and e4 being played first. Both players trade off a couple of centre pawns and John blockages the e pawn from pushing with his knight on e5. Both players make small improving moves and white hangs a pawn, but then pins John’s knight to his queen and threatens to win the knight with a rook and bishop. White threatens a knight fork on the queenside, but John stops this and white blunders a piece. John does take a piece and white retakes, but white’s knight hangs out on d4 and John is the one to blunder a piece.

Both players make improving moves and they trade pawns in the centre and queenside, which leaves the d and c files open. White grabs some pawns with her queen and John attacks with a queen and bishop battery on white’s king. John keeps checking and white blocks the checks but John just takes the blocking pieces. John takes another free piece which means he is now a piece up on white. White threatens a queen infiltration and John proudly castles kingside 31 moves into the game with both his g and h pawns on the 5th rank!

White tries to attack John’s queen, but John checks white’s king with one of his bishops and white blocks with a rook, but John takes anyway and keeps checking the white king. Soon after, white resigns.

Final Words

What a spectacle of an evening. So many eventful and exciting games by so many of Anstey’s players, and we finished the evening with 4.5 points to Anstey and 1.5 to Kirby, which keeps Anstey in 5th place in the division 4 league! Anstey 3 are now only one point behind Leicester University and only two points behind the 3rd team in the division: Braunstone 3. Anstey have now got two games against Heathcote arms one after the other, and Heathcote aren’t doing too well being 8th place out of 9 in the division. This means if Anstey can win either one or two against Heathcote then we have a strong chance of being 4th place. Anyway, that’s all from us today. I hope you all enjoyed the read, and see you next time.