This match is quite memorable for a number of reasons. One of which being that El Capitan (Oskar) had forgotten about this match and was accidentally reminded by Mike, and two of which being that El Capitan had given the wrong house number to Mike for him to pick Leo up. Not a great start to this match, but it was quite a fun night in my humble opinion.

Heathcote is quite a small and very friendly club, and it’s always a pleasure to play against pleasant people. As the league table stands, Heathcote Arms are 8th on the board and Anstey were 5th placed, so we are hoping to win against Heathcote as this would help to solidify our place in the middle of the league board.

Board 1: Borislav “The Toaster” Lazarov plays white; Ray Beach plays black

So, Boris plays his usual Jobava London, and both players develop normally without tension between pieces until Boris castles and black attacks white’s dark squared bishop. Boris ignores the attack and retreats his c3 knight to play c3 and black trades his knight for the dark squared bishop, which Boris takes back with a pawn. Black castles and Boris simply develops his pieces, whilst also putting pressure on black’s king and bringing his rooks to the d and e files. Boris also plants a Pillsbury knight on e5, which black puts more pressure on.

At this point, black starts to make some pawn advances on the queenside and Boris does start to do the same, but instead he reinforces the e5 knight by planting his other knight on f3 and makes other improving moves, such as king to h1. Black now has his b, c and d pawns advanced to the 5th rank, and Boris makes some more improving moves by moving his queen and one rook to assist with the pawn advances. Black plays b4 and at this point Boris starts to trade a lot of pieces off the board. First, Boris trades his e5 knight, then his d pawn for black’s b pawn. Boris also takes a free pawn on a6 with his light squared bishop and black trades the bishops and Boris lands his queen on a6.

Now, black slides his rook onto c2, which Boris challenges with his own rook and black doubles rooks on the c file, and Boris trades a rook for a rook. The resulting position is Boris has 3 past pawns on the a and b files and white has two past doubled pawns on the d file. Both players have a rook and a queen, but black has a dark squared bishop for Boris’ knight. Boris starts pushing one of his doubled b pawns, which black does win but Boris trades queens. Boris also lands his knight on e5, which black promptly takes with his bishop and Boris retakes with one of his doubled f pawns.

Black now starts to push his d pawns, but Boris simply blocks them with his rook and moves his king out to take the pawns. Then Boris initiates another series of trades, which results in both players having 3 pawns each and they have a past pawn each. However, black trades rooks after Boris takes his past d pawn, which doesn’t end well as Boris can move his king to take the remaining black pawns, whilst black has to use his king to take white’s past b pawn. Black resigns.

Board 2: Richard Maconnachie plays white; Mike Griffiths plays black

The game starts with e4 and c5, which transitions into the Staunton-Cochrane version of the Sicilian. Both players develop normally with little tension, Mike fianchettoes his dark squared bishop and castles king side. White challenges Mike’s f6 knight and a few moves later trades the bishop for the knight. Both players make small improving moves, and Mike prepares to advance his b pawn to tackle white’s c4 pawn. Mike moves his knight to d4 which white trades off with his own knight. Mike reinforces his attack on the queenside by doubling his rooks. White offers a light squared bishop trade, which Mike takes, and after white retakes with a knight Mike attacks the knight with h5 and pins the knight to white’s king.

Mike now trades bishop for knight and white has to retake with a pawn, which doubles his pawns on the e file. As a side note, Mike also is the only one with two sets of triple connected pawns. One set is on the light squares and the other is on the dark squares, and together they form a bowl shape. Now, Mike finishes his cereal and opens up the queenside by trading b and c pawns, which allows Mike to win a pawn and white trades one rook for one of Mike’s rooks. After the dust settles, Mike doesn’t have the bowl shape anymore, but it doesn’t matter because Mike is the only one with a past pawn and this past pawn is quite strong as it’s on the a file.

White’s king attacks Mike’s rook and Mike drops it back. White now centralises his king and starts to chip away at Mike’s centre pawns. Mike allows white to do this, but Mike starts to push his a pawn and white allows Mike to push it all the way to a7 with very little resistance. White also pushed his c pawn all the way to the 7th rank, which Mike has to counter by offering a draw via repetition of moves. However, Mike tries to advance his king which is a blunder according to the computer. White queens the pawn and Mike has to check the king and trade the rook for the new queen. Mike resigns a few moves later, as he can’t win without a rook to counteract white’s rook.

Board 3: Leo Abraham plays white; Bill Roberts plays black

This game started off as an Italian four knights opening with black pinning Leo’s c3 knight and playing d4, which Leo responds with bishop to b5 to pin the c6 knight. Black plays d3 trying to win the knight but Leo finds the clutch move a3 to trade the knight for the bishop and only lose a pawn, for now. Leo takes the undefended e5 pawn, which puts more pressure on black’s pinned knight. Black moves the bishop to block the pin, and Leo trades the knight for knight and bishop for bishop. The resulting position means that black has doubled c pawns and an isolated a pawn.

Leo pins the f6 knight to black’s queen. Black moves the queen out of the way to stop the pin and both players castle. Leo moves his dark squared bishop to attack black’s queen. Black moves his queen and Leo takes more space with f4 and lifts his rook to f3 and attacks black’s over extended pawn on c3. Black moves his knight to attack Leo’s bishop and Leo moves his bishop out the way to attack the c3 pawn and takes the c3 pawn with the queen. Leo now has a queen and bishop battery against black’s king, which makes black play f6, which does trap his own knight on g4, Leo doesn’t see this but he does spot a skewer of the black queen and rook.

After the skewer, Leo offers a queen trade which black accepts and Leo takes one of the only two open files in the position on the b file. In this position, Leo has the b file, doubled c pawns and a rook for a knight, as well as an isolated a pawn. Black defends Leo’s rook infiltration with his only rook, and Leo digs for gold and goes after black’s a pawn. Black takes the open d file and Leo attacks black’s trapped knight on g4, which black counters with rook to d1 check and Leo has to block the check otherwise it’s checkmate for black. Black trades rooks and manages to nab one of Leo’s c pawns. Leo takes black’s a pawn and starts pushing his own a pawn with little resistance. The black knight manages to catch up to the pawn and forks Leo’s rook and the promotion square, but Leo doesn’t care and promotes anyway forcing black to take the newly promoted queen, and Leo has a rook and some more pawns whilst black only has pawns. Black resigns.

Board 4: Gordon Milner plays white; Oskar “El Capitan” Rudczenko plays black

The game starts with the modern variation of the Scandinavian defence. Oskar takes the pawn on d5 with his f3 knight and white trades knights, which Oskar retakes with the queen. Both players develop their remaining knights and white attacks Oskar’s queen with c4 and Oskar drops his queen back to d8. Oskar establishes a small pawn centre with e5 and reinforcing it with bishop to d3. White castles and plays d4, which Oskar ignores and castles as well. Black pushes his c and d pawns to try and force Oskar to retreat his pieces, but Oskar counters with knight to b4 attacking the now over extended d pawn. White takes Oskar’s e5 pawn and Oskar takes white’s d pawn.

White now continues developing, but Oskar wants to keep trading so he takes white’s dark squared bishop and white trades queens. White can retake the knight on e3, but he doesn’t and instead places his f1 rook on e1, which allows Oskar to fork whites rooks. White tries to attack, but Oskar wants to continue trading and blocks the attack with one of his bishops whilst offering a bishop trade. White refuses and Oskar takes the hanging c5 pawn. Oskar also infiltrates on d2 with his rook and doubles rooks on the d file. White tries to attack Oskar’s dark squared bishop with b4, but this allows Oskar to fork white’s rook and knight and Oskar takes white’s knight freely.

Now, the current position is that Oskar as the d file, and he has two bishops and two rooks whilst white has a light squared bishop and a rook. It is very difficult for white to move, because if white moves either his bishop or rook away from the d1 square it will be checkmate as Oskar has doubled rooks and white’s king has no luft on the 7th rank. White tries to make some luft with g3, but Oskar seals it up with his light squared bishop placing it on h3. At this point, white has to shuffle his pieces a little bit to try and move, but white takes Oskar’s c7 pawn with his rook, which allows Oskar to start a forced mate in 2. White resigns.

Final Words

So, Anstey 3 wins! A marvellous victory for the team as this now solidifies our 5th place position on the board. Ashby 5 might be able to catch up to us, but it’s likely that we’ll have the same points as they do. We’ll hopefully end the season with 17 points at least, which will certainly mean we are 5th in the league, and if we win our last match then we’ll end in 4th place for the season.

For now though, we’ll concentrate on the next match we’ve got, which will be against Heathcote again in about 2 weeks time on the 13th of April. Thanks for reading again everyone, and I hope to see all of you on the 13th :), peace.