Board 1

Jakub played on board 1 as the white pieces against a slightly higher rated opponent, but Jakub is improving quite quickly and he may even be underrated. The game starts off as a usual indian game, but on move 2 Jakub’s opponent plays e5, which is the Budapest gambit. From here we get a very slow and positional game as Jakub uses up more time than his opponent. In the end it comes down to a queen and bishop endgame where Jakub’s king is quite weak, but not weak enough to get mated. Jakub’s opponent keeps trying to find a checkmate but non appear. By the end black had three queenside past pawns and Jakub had two past kingside pawns, but Jakub manages to make a perpetual check and they both agree to a draw.

Heathcote 0.5 – Anstey 0.5.

Board 2

Oskar, El capitan, plays on board 2 and plays the scandinavian defence. This is again a very slow game, but a lot happens in this one. Oskar applies some pressure to white’s position and keeps applying pressure. Disallowing his opponent to castle, but white does castle anyway and Oskar takes a knight for free. White tries to create threats of his own, but Oskar defends and keeps applying serious pressure trying to win the white queen. Oskar also plays some very tricky moves and even allows white to take his queen, but it means Oskar went up an exchange whilst also trading queens. The end game is quite one-sided too where Oskar forces white to retreat his bishop to defend the king and Oskar wins yet another piece for free. White resigns.

Heathcote 0.5 – Anstey 1.5

Board 3

Curtis plays on board 3 and he plays as white using the italian, and black opts for a philidor defence set up. Both plays develop their pieces quite normally, black pins Curtis’ knight to his queen, but all of a sudden Curtis plays Nxe5. Black did not see this at the time but Curtis is actually threatening a mate in 3, that is if black takes Curtis’ queen, which black shouldn’t take. Instead, black should take Curtis’ knight and exchange a bishop for knight and go down a pawn. Although, I suppose black thought, “oh free queen” and then fell into a mate in 3 trap, which would be difficult to see as this wasn’t even the first 10 moves of the game. So Curtis wins.

Heathcote 0.5 – Anstey 2.5.

Board 4

Reidan plays as the black pieces and white plays the spanish or the roy lopez and Reidan opts for the morphy defence. This was a very entertaining game to look at as Reidan launches all of his kingside pawns towards white’s king, which could have ended up being a very strong attack but unfortunately Reidan made some inaccuracies, which may have cost him the game because when you launch your kingside pawns quite aggressively then either one of two things will happen: either you will checkmate your opponent or your opponent will checkmate you. Unfortunately, the latter happened with Reidan as his king was vulnerable and white was able to capitalise on this.

Heathcote 1.5 – Anstey 2.5.