Here we go, the 4th match of the league season in Leicestershire against the 3rd team of the Syston club (the only club in Leicestershire to have a Grandmaster). Playing for Anstey are Oskar Rudczenko, Curtis Blunt, Jakub Miler and Reidan Minhas. Yet again, Anstey are the underdogs when we look at the rating points of each player, but players can be underrated and others can be over rated, and Anstey are far from a weak club. This may be another tough match, but when you lose you learn, and when you win you realise your real strength.

Board 1: Oskar Rudczenko (1205) vs Oscar Brown (1400)

Oskar plays white and his opponent plays a sicilian defence as black. Oskar opts to develop his pieces before opening the position with d4, which is okay but at some point it does bite Oskar back a little later. By the time Oskar has castled and developed three minor pieces his opponent has only developed two minor pieces, but black does have some play with Bg4 pinning a knight to Oskar’s queen. Oskar can no longer play d4, which makes his position a little more cagey.

Oskar defends the pin with Be2 and afterwards both players develop and improve their position slowly but surely. Until Oskar advances his e pawn to e5, which does work quite well and as Oskar had intended it. Black initiates a trade of bishops, Oskar recaptures with his queen which does fall into Nd4 with the threat of forking Oskar’s white rooks, so Oskar has to move the queen back to d1 to defend. Black offers a trade of knights which Oskar does not mind but he develops his last bishop whilst he can. Black trades the knights off and offers a bishop trade, which Oskar forces as he move his queen out to threaten mate in 1.

Black simply trades the bishops and snaps the c pawn with his knight on d4. Oskar attacks the knight and the knight moves to attack the now isolated queens pawn, which Oskar cannot defend, so he allows for black to take the pawn with a rook fork, but Oskar wins the queen for his two rooks. This can be an okay trade if the opposing rooks cannot coordinate, but this does not matter as Oskar has very little time on the clock at this point. Oskar tries to make his position work, but having only seconds to think of each move he has to move fast. At the end of it Oskar traps his own queen just after running out of time. Syston 1 – Anstey 0.

Board 2: Curtis Blunt (1137) vs David Bedder (1375)

Curtis plays as black and plays the Giuoco Piano game, which is a variation of the italian opening. Both players move some pawns and develop pieces to improve and stabilise their positions. White plays a3 and b4 to make Curtis move his dark squared bishop to b6. White offers a dark squared bishop trade on e3, which Curtis accepts and white has a semi-open f file and a useful pawn structure with doubled e pawns. Both players castle and Curtis plays d5 to break open the centre of the board, which white happily accepts and trades pawn for pawn and bishop for knight. White moves his knight to f5 to make an outpost, which Curtis counters well with his own knight and Curtis trades knights, and white takes back with the rook.

Curtis gives a check with his queen on b6, which white blocks with his rook and Curtis lifts his rook to e6 to start to take advantage of the pinned rook. White tries to deal with this by attacking Curtis’s queen with a knight, which Curtis deals well with by moving the queen to a different spot on the same diagonal, so still pinning the rook. White can deal with the pin quite easily with other moves like Qe2 and Raf1, which I suppose white did not do because he was worried about his pawns getting attacked.

Again white tries to attack Curtis’ queen with a knight and Curtis deals with this well by moving the queen to e3. At this point white I imagine gets quite frustrated and just offers a queen trade, which Curtis accepts. White recaptures with the a1 rook, so Curtis attacks the vulnerable white a pawn, which white defends by moving his rook back to a1. Curtis plays f6 to stabilise his e pawn, but white immediately attacks Curtis’ e pawn with d4 and Curtis trades the e pawn off. White recaptures with his knight, which Curtis immediately attacks and white defends with c3.

Curtis restricts the white knight with a6 and white advances his pawns on the kingside with g4. At this point both players agree to a draw, which maybe rightly played as the computer does say that their position is slightly better for black by about 0.2. Black is to play and the computer says black’s best move is to play b6, 29: Re1, c5 to advance on the queenside, whilst white’s play might be to focus on the kingside and centre. Nevertheless, both players played a good game with both getting 91% accuracy according to stockfish on chess.com. Syston 1 1/2 – Anstey 1/2.

Board 3: Jakub Miler (1130) vs Aron English (1294)

Jakub starts with d4 and the game transitions into a queen’s gambit declined with blacks second move being Nf6 and then e6 rather than e6 being before Nf6. After e6 Jakub strikes with Bg5 and black strikes with Bb4 so both players have pinned each others knights. Jakub plays e3 and black trades off the bishop for the knight, which allows Jakub to have two c pawns, so he can attack black’s centre twice. Black defends the second c pawn push and then plays Qa5+; Jakub blocks the check with his queen and black plays Qa3. Jakub finishes developing his minor pieces, both sides castle, and black trades his d pawn for Jakub’s second c pawn.

Black centralises his knight on e4 attacking Jakub’s queen and reinforcing the e4 knight with Ndf6. Black trades a knight for a bishop, both players make small improving moves and black trades a knight for a knight. However, Jakub moves Rab1 and white responds with Rb8, but because black’s light squared bishop is still on it’s home square this means the rooks aren’t connected. This allows Jakub to play Bxc6, because if black retakes then Jakub can take the rook on b8 with his b1 rook, and the position would result in Jakub being up the exchange and having won a pawn. Therefore, black does not retake on c6 and moves the bishop instead, which makes bxc6 now a threat so Jakub has to move his bishop.

Jakub now attacks black’s light squared bishop twice with pawns. Black attacks Jakub’s queen once and black sacrifices the bishop for a pawn, which does not make a lot of sense as the bishop was not trapped, but I suppose black did not see the squares he could move the bishop to? Either way, Jakub is up a piece and even though black gets two pawns it’s not exactly worth the trade. Now some more manoeuvring from both sides and black builds a queen rook battery on the c file, which Jakub challenges with one of his rooks and black sacs the queen for two rooks, which would be a bad decision, but a couple of moves later black wins Jakub’s bishop as it was pinned to Jakub’s king to stop checkmate. In the final position, Jakub has a queen for two rooks.

Eventually, the queenside pawns get traded down and a couple of pawns from the kingside, so it’s queen vs rooks and both sides have f and g pawns, which the computer does estimate is a draw with perfect play; both players agree to a drawn game. Syston 2 – Anstey 1.

Here is Jakub’s game if anyone would like to take a look: https://www.chess.com/a/MNv5byMYJdyp?tab=analysis&move=45

Board 4: Reidan Minhas (725) vs Rohan Joshi (1200)

Reidan plays black against the london system, which Reidan starts to attack immediately with Bg4 threatening to pin white’s knight if white ever moves his e pawn. However, after the second knight moves to defend the potential pin Reidan moves the bishop to f5 instead, possibly thinking the bishop is doing less on g4 compared to f5. White makes the london triangle pawn structure and Reidan starts to advance his kingside pawns and then moves his knight to a5 to make an outpost on c4, which white immediately stops with Qa4+ and Reidan has to move his knight back to c6 in order not to lose it.

White puts more pressure on Reidans now pinned knight with Bb5, which Reidan defends with Bd7. Reidan now tries to force the situation with a6, which forces white to make a decision to trade his bishop for a knight or to move the bishop back. White chooses to move the bishop back, which allows Reidan to advance his queenside pawns more to attack white’s queen. White move his queen and Reidan fires back on the kingside with g5, which white ignores to play Bxh7, which Reidan ignores and takes the bishop he was attacking with his g pawn.

Unfortunately, Reidan had missed a mate in 1 with either the bishop or queen moving to g6, as Reidan had moved his f pawn to the 6th rank earlier in the game. However, it is not as if Reidan was getting out played, he only missed a move, which happens to all of us. As long as Reidan practises his puzzles and tactic recognition he may be able to spot these types of moves more quickly. Syston 3 – Anstey 1.

Final Words

Anstey are not having a great season this year as a start, which is not the end of the world, as I know from experience that you can start rough but have a good ending. Anstey may have better luck a bit later, but the best thing we can do right now is to analyse, practise and prepare for the next match. Speaking of which, we will be playing against Leicester Uni 2 for our 5th match, which could go either way as the Uni team are slightly lower in strength and experience compared to most other clubs in Leicester. However, there’s no harm in preparing for a rough ride. Until that match has been played out, I hope you have a good day and I wish you fare well until next time.