First time playing against the newly made team 2 of Leicester Uni; it’s always good to see a club grow. It’s 4 vs 4, and Curtis did request to be put on stage for the match (picture below), which he was very chuffed about.

Board 1: Curtis Blunt (black) vs. Ben Taylor (white)

E4 & e5 start transposing into a vienna, which quickly transposes into a berlin like game. No tension on the board as both players develop their pieces and escort their king safely to the corner of the battlefield. Both players play one more waiting move each (a3 & a6) until white finally releases some tension by providing piece tension: centralising his knight on d5. Curtis keeps the tension for one more move before deciding to capture the knight on d5.

After a bit of trading there remains no more tension once again, and both players make identical moves (c3 & c6), but Curtis’ move is the more forcing to push white’s bishop to a2, which Curtis challenges with his own bishop. Both players move their c pawns again, but Curtis is the one to try and press for an attack with b5. White counter attacks with a knight, but Curtis takes on c4, which does not win a pawn but it does force white to damage his own pawn structure. White trades the knight for a bishop.

Curtis is doing quite well, his position is good and he has ways of improving his position, such as he can move his knight to c6 to really dominate the queen side on the dark squares. Curtis could also move his queen to the semi-open b file and double rooks, or create a queen and rook battery on the b file. Curtis is doing well up until move 18, on move 19 Curtis moves his knight to g5, which is good in theory as it attacks an undefended dark squared bishop. However, moving his knight to g5 blunders as white can simply take the undefended knight with his queen.

After this Curtis quickly starts to trade most of his pieces off, which is not what someone should do when they are down a clean piece. Curtis does stop trading pieces, but the only piece he has left is a rook against a bishop and a rook. A few moves later Curtis resigns, which is an unfortunate ending to a good looking middle game. There maybe some inaccuracies during the start, but it is still a good looking game. After the match, Curtis did get some coaching from our budget grand master (Julian Tarwid, a polish 1900 player aka The Engine).

Curtis’ game: https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/pgn/2sPCLZ3V3c?tab=analysis&move=51

Anstey 0 – Leics Uni 1

Board 2: Jakub Miler (white) vs. Fraser MacDonald (black)

The game starts as a benoni defence with black having a little bit more space than white. Both players develop their pieces with no tension on the board as of yet. Black advances his centre and Jakub counter attacks, which provokes black into playing a very aggressive move, which is Ng4 attacking the f2 pawn twice with the bishop on c5. Jakub does defend this threat quite well, but the way he defends this threat allows black to fork two of Jakub’s minor pieces. Therefore Jakub will unfortunately be playing down a piece.

Jakub is forced to give up the bishop otherwise black will fork Jakub’s rook and king on f2. Then Jakub rotates the knight onto g3 and forces the black g4 knight to move, which may have been a mistake as the black knight moves to a better position on e5, which threatens to trade pieces off the board and because Jakub is already a piece down he really does not want trades. However, in this case Jakub is forced to trade pieces, and Jakub does try to make things difficult for black with Qh5, but black has a simple way of defending.

Jakub does keep trying to dig his foot in some how, but black again has quite simple defences, so instead of trying to attack black’s pieces, Jakub tries to make big threats to try and freeze black’s pieces. Jakub moves his queen away from the black king to make sure the queen cannot get attacked easily, then Jakub doubles rooks and as soon as black makes a misplay, Jakub takes the b7 pawn. A ridiculous move that seems impossible, but black cannot retake otherwise Jakub would be able to deliver a forced mate on e8 with his doubled rooks.

Black deals with this situation well though, and Jakub has to move his queen back. Not a lot happens from here on out as black forces some more trades off the board. Jakub does move his king onto the same diagonal as his queen, which would normally be a blunder, but the f pawn can block this pin so the skewer is not really a threat in this case. Jakub does of course try his best to create counter play and keep the game alive, but before the game ends black manages to take two of Jakub’s very loose pawns and creating two past pawns, which would be very difficult for Jakub to defend with only a rook against a rook and bishop.

Jakub’s game: https://www.chess.com/a/apGsHtY6Jdyp?tab=analysis&move=85

Anstey 0 – Leics Uni 2

Board 3: Hayden Padgett (black) vs. Gnanvardh Pentakota (white)

The game starts with a four knights italian opening, in which there is no tension in the position at all until move 7 where white centralises one of his knights and Hayden immediately trades off knights and centralise one of his own knights, which white does not trade off. White instead puts more pressure on the black knight and Hayden moves his knight out of the centre, which allows black to play d4. Both players trade off pawn for pawn and Hayden moves his queen into an xray, which is not great but it does not come with terrible consequences. Both players simply trade off a few minor pieces. Soon after this Hayden trades queens and they are now in an endgame where both sides have two rooks and a bishop, as well as 7 pawns each.

Hayden immediately takes control of the open e file, where as white solidifies his pawns on the queenside and Hayden tries to break the pawns apart with c6. White expands on the queenside and tries to prevent Hayden from expanding on the king side with h6, g5, but Hayden still expands and both players trade pawns. White stops Hayden from advancing his g pawn further. Hayden tickles one of white’s rooks to try and get some firm control of the e file, which white denies and so Hayden trades off a pair of rooks to try and keep control of the e file. However, Hayden now trades another pair of rooks off the board, which means this position is more likely to be a draw.

Both players now try to get their kings more involved in the game, which you need to do to have a better chance of winning an endgame. White trades off a pawn for pawn and Hayden does his best to freeze the kingside of the board. White carries on to try and make progress, but Hayden does his best to stop white and Hayden does start to repeat moves, but white still tries to find a way to win. White marches his king down to the h file to try and get behind the black pawns and start taking some free material, but Hayden has the same idea and he is quicker than white, so white will at some point have to move back to defend his own pawns.

White moves his bishop to defend what pawns remain, but on move 47 white makes a blunder and allows the chance for Hayden to win. Using a computer to look at the position, white had to start moving back to defend himself, but white kept moving forward behind the black pawns. However, Hayden does not see it as he thinks he will lose if he does not start moving back, so Hayden moves his king back to c3, but if he had moved to a5 it would have been a win. This is quite a hard move to find and I did not see it until now, but it will be a good game to learn from.

Hayden does start to move his king back around to defend himself and (using an engine) the position is still a draw, until Hayden moves his bishop away from the d6 pawn on move 51, which now gives white a past pawn. Hayden does try to defend the position, but it is difficult to defend as black has got an isolated f pawn, which Hayden will need to defend as well. However, Hayden unfortunately is not able to defend and he resigns on the 65th move of the game. A good end game to look at in which Hayden could have won, but again it is a difficult move to see and it is a good lesson for Hayden to learn.

Hayden’s game: https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/pgn/32G2tK33KC?tab=analysis

Anstey 0 – Leics Uni 3

Board 4: Reidan Minhas (white) vs. Yingxin Chen (black)

E5 c5 start to the game with black playing a najdorf type set up for the first few moves and Reidan playing an italian set up. No tension at the moment as both players are developing their pieces. Reidan castles and black prepares to castle whilst Reidan is preparing to play e5, which Reidan does do successfully and this forces black’s f6 knight back to d7. Reidan trades his e pawn off and pushes some pawns forward, I suppose waiting for his opponent to make some moves herself.

Black pushes her e pawn forward and Reidan blocks the pawn’s path with his c3 knight, which black immediately trades off for her own knight. Black manages to grab Reidan’s h pawn, which was loose, but Reidan does create some counter attack with Ng5, which attacks the bishop and attacks black’s pawns in front of her king. After black retreats her bishop back to it’s home square Reidan has some good opportunities to make some attacking moves, such as Qh5 which would put lots of unpleasant pressure on the black position.

However, Reidan instead took on f7 with his bishop, which black retakes with her rook and Reidan takes the rook with his knight, but Reidan has just lost a piece. Even though it is a rook he has obtained, he has traded a bishop and a knight for a rook, which is not a favourable trade. Afterwards, Reidan moves his queen up to d5 with check, which black blocks with her bishop and Reidan has to move his queen out of the way. Black now centralises her knight on d4, which is known as a pillsbury knight when a knight is defended by two pawns. Reidan moves his queen again, which allows black to develop her queen to an active square on f6. This threatens Nf3+, which was a threat to win an exchange but Reidan defends against it well.

Redain again shuffles his queen once more, which allows black to move her bishop into a good position, and this is not good for Reidan as black is arranging her pieces to attack and checkmate white. Reidan does miss this and black does manage to checkmate Reidan. The start of this game is promising for Reidan as he had a significant advantage in the opening and start of the middle game, but unfortunately Reidan chose to exchange two pieces for a rook. Afterwards, Reidan was not able to create an attack and he shuffled his pieces more than is necessary.

Reidan’s game: https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/pgn/5dYKSFQ4E2?tab=analysis&move=44

Anstey 0 – Leics Uni 4

Final Words

Not a great result for Anstey 4, but there were some shining moments for each player. With every loss we learn something, which is all that matters really.

Our next match will be against Melton Mowbray, which maybe hard as they are one of the 3 top teams in the league. Not expecting much, but I’m sure it will be good to play another game of chess!