Thursday 06/07/2023. Anstey welcomed Wigston to the Methodist Church in Anstey for this LRCA 2023 Chapman Cup semi-final fixture. After squeezing past Shepshed in round 1 Anstey were full of confidence though made two changes to that team with John and Mick coming in for Boris and Ben respectively.

The Chapman Cup has a handicap system in place effectively giving lower rated teams a head start in the match, meaning the higher rated team has to win more points on the real boards to win the match. In round 1 Wigston fielded a decent team versus a relatively mediocre Market Harborough side and faced a 3½ point deficit meaning they had to win on all 4 boards… which they did! Against Anstey, Wigston had a weakened team (with Lewis Turner playing his county championship match) and so they benefited from a ½ point handicap advantage.

So with Anstey needing 2½ points to take the match the captains tossed for colours, Wigston winning and choosing white on odd boards. The players shook hands and battle commenced.

Board 1: Stephen Smith (Wigston 1822) v Julian Tarwid (Anstey 1947)
Stephen went for a solid opening but Julian equalised easily. Before fully completing development white pushed his king’s knight forward swapping it for black’s queenside counterpart and when the queens came off black ended up with an unusual diamond pawn formation:

Despite the pawn structure black stands better due to the open lines and his piece activity. This was enhanced further after Julian played a couple of super accurate moves and when white exchanged his dark-squared bishop for black’s knight, black’s bishop pair ran riot in white’s position. Stephen gave up a knight and exchanged a pair of rooks to try and ease the pressure before finally blundering into a deadly mating net:

In an already hopeless position white played 30. Ke1? giving black mate in 2 with 30. … Bc3+. Stephen resigned.

Board 2: Matthew Connor (Anstey 1769) v Peter Collings (Wigston 1698)
Matt was the only Anstey player to lose in round 1 so was out to make amends. He came out of the opening with a tiny edge in a very classical game of chess, both sides playing their own game developing calmly. Until move 16. Having used up a bit too much time on the clock Matt decided it was going to be easier to attack than defend or just push wood and started a speculative kingside attack. This gave Peter something to think about and a couple of defensive mistakes when trying to complicate quickly gave Matt a crushing advantage:

Black is horribly weak on the white squares, Peter resigned after a few more moves before the inevitable checkmate in the middle of the board.

Board 3: Les Corlett (Wigston 1660) v John Robinson (Anstey 1701)
John didn’t mess about and gambited a pawn on move 3. He got a lead in development and then messed up white’s queenside pawn structure swapping bishop for knight on c3. But he never quite had enough compensation for the pawn, Les played calmly and very slowly untangled his position. Plenty of manoeuvring and probing followed with both sides playing ok but white’s advantage gradually increased. As time ticked down John had a few tactics to keep Les on his toes but none came off and with just a few seconds left on the clock John blundered a rook and resigned.

Board 4: Mick Sandham (Anstey 1637) v Chris Brown (Wigston 1425)
With the biggest rating differential this game was earmarked as a must win for Anstey. Mick rocketed out of the blocks and gambited a pawn in one of his favourite European openings. But Chris was well prepared and played very accurately. As minor pieces were swapped off Mick ruined black’s kingside pawn structure and had good compensation for the pawn. But with fewer pieces on the board it was hard to see a way to attack for white. Mick started to shuffle his kingside pawns forward but they never really got going. In the meantime, Chris activated his queen and rook on the open e-file, played Qh3 and pushed his own h-pawn. Mick checked with Nf5 and after Kf8 thinking he was threatening mate in 2 with Qh6 played Qd3-d2 unfortunately leaving the f5 knight en-prise with Qh3xf5. Oops. Mick played on as Chris was very short on time (down to less than 3 seconds on at least a couple of occasions) but he handled the endgame well and although Mick queened a pawn it was too late as Chis had queened first and white’s horribly exposed king was getting mated. Mick resigned.

Summary
So with 2 wins each Wigston take the match with the ½ point handicap:

Wigston will play Loughborough in the final.

Anstey captain Matt Connor told Sky Sports:
Our cup dream is over, I’m gutted. Our two defeats were actually very close games and, on another day, we could easily have got the ½ point we needed to see us over the line. But hey-ho, that’s knockout chess for you (not to be confused with chess-boxing), good luck to Wigston in the final!