Anstey score their first point of the season

Thursday 19/10/2023. Anstey 1 welcomed Thurnby to the Anstey Methodist Church Centre for their first home game in LRCA league division 1. Coming off a hammering by Shepshed the week before Anstey were targeting this match as a must-win with Thurnby likely to be their main challengers for relegation! With Ben away on holiday John stepped up from the second team to deputise and Mick being back from holiday took over the board five duties from Noor).

In likely to be a very rare occurrence this season Anstey actually out rated their opponents 8,852 vs 8,126 but unfortunately the numerical advantage came to nowt. Even the brand-new wooden sets and pieces donated to the club by Ben from his earning at the British Chess Championships couldn’t get them over the line.

The two Johns finished first on board three, pretty much playing out a grandmaster draw in twenty moves. John P as white eked out a small advantage but neither side looked that interested in starting any kind of attack and a draw was agreed.

Matt played Roland on board two and was the next to finish. In a change of approach this season Matt has eschewed some of his wilder lines with white and played much more solid openings. Or misplayed as it turns out. Having doubled black’s c pawns at the expense of a bishop for a knight exchange he missed a crucial move order nuance which allowed black to activate his pieces and untangle his pawns. The queens came off and it looked like Roland would be able to double his rooks on the c-file and invade but Matt defended accurately, and the game petered out to a draw.

Mick was playing the slightly inexperienced Ross Martin on board 5 as black. Now going for a more flexible interchangeable system he still ended up with a backward d-pawn but at least he managed to castle. Out of the opening white may have stood slightly better but with a more solid (than usual) setup Mick launched his infamous g5 and h5 kingside attack, doubled his rooks on the f-file and put white under some serious pressure. Looking for defensive resources white dropped his bishop back from b2 to c1 hitting black’s rook on f4 and offered a draw. Mick checked on Julian’s and Boris’s games and thinking that Boris was winning and Julian was about equal he took the draw. What both players had missed was that Bc1 left the pawn on d4 undefended and black could simply play Rxd4 going a pawn up with a winning position…

Boris was winning on board 4 against Michael Busby. Then he wasn’t. Then he was. Then he wasn’t. Then he was. Then he nearly gave away a draw before finally wearing down his opponent who made a final blunder and Boris took the win! (Yay, our first win of the season!). A 70-move thriller, a real rollercoaster of a game. Quoting Tartakower “The winner of the game is the player who makes the next-to-last mistake”.

Julian’s game as black against Ray Burgess was the last to finish and another long one with 80-odd moves, Julian playing the last 40-odd moves with less than a minute on the clock. With Julian going into time trouble Ray did have a 30-minute advantage as well as an advantage on the board. He’d  pushed a pawn up to a7 and this was causing Julian a real headache, in the end he had to give up material to eliminate it. Ray then played carefully as Julian fought for counterplay and used up his time advantage in doing so. Julian did manage to create a passed-pawn but it was doomed, he promoted it to a bishop rather than a queen in an attempt to throw Ray off his game but it didn’t work. Ray snapped it off then gave back most of his material advantage to get to a won king and pawn vs king ending, rubbing salt into Julian’s wound by also under-promoting (sadly to a rook not a bishop).

So the match finished as a draw:

Both teams are going to find it hard this season but at least the shared points meant that Braunstone drop to last place:

Anstey captain Matt Connor told BBC Sport:
Arrghh, so close! To be fair Boris’s game could have gone either way so we could have lost the match but Mick was mullering his opponent. A real case of “would’ve, could’ve, should’ve”!