The quiet before the storm. Not a lot happened before the matches started. Oskar helped to set up the boards with the Kirby players, and some people were slightly late getting to the venue as it can be quite hard to find and traffic can be a nightmare. Nonetheless, everyone made it to the match and everyone was able to play a solid game of chess.

It isn’t necessary for Anstey 3 to win this, but it would be great as we have drawn most of our matches and have stayed in the middle of the leader board for the whole season. The Kirby Castlers were not doing very well throughout the whole season staying at near the bottom of the board, so it would be ideal for Anstey to win as this would help to maintain our position in 5th place.

Board 1: Mike Griffiths plays white; John Walker plays black

Mike started off with the english and the game proceeds as a king’s english variation where white fianchetto’s the king’s bishop. Mike launches b4 onto the board along with a4 and then b5. White’s knight and black’s light bishop get traded off. Black takes the b5 pawn and Mike retakes, which now allows the c file to be fully open. Both players make small positional improvements and they trade knight for knight. Mike keeps his fianchettoed bishop, which now slices through the board. Black offers a queen trade, which is considered a blunder by the computer, and Mike takes the queen trade. I suppose this is a blunder because of how powerful Mike’s bishop is and he has control of the only open file for rooks to use, which Mike takes full advantage of and wins a pawn. Black decides to trade a pair of rooks and Mike keeps control of the open file and keeps his very strong bishop.

Both players fidget around with their pawns a little bit, again making small positional improvements to control certain squares. Mike then attacks black’s centralised dark bishop and a centre pawn, black trades pawns and Mike offers a dark squared bishop trade, which black accepts. Black then places his rook on the c file in front of Mike’s light squared bishop, which blockades the c file. Although, this allows Mike to gain a very advanced past pawn on the a file, and black stops this briefly but Mike finds the best moves and black can’t stop the pawn from queening. Black resigns.

Board 2: Nigel Wollen plays white; Bob Grindrod plays black

Bob starts with a french defence and it turns into the exchange variation. Bob fianchetto’s his dark squared bishop and castles king side. Both players make improving moves and white offers a trade of dark bishops, which Bob doesn’t act on and white chooses to trade bishops. Both players continue to make small improving moves. White trades off a knight for a knight, and again both players continue to make small improving moves before Bob offers another trade of pieces, this time offering a light squared bishop for a light squared bishop. White immediately takes it. Bob then blockades the only open file (the e file) with a knight. White dances his knight around the board, and while the white knight dances Bob makes more improving moves.

White trades off knights and Bob retakes with a rook, and white doesn’t want to trade rook for rook so he makes Bob trade rooks. The e file remains open and Bob makes sure that white can’t take advantage of it by placing his king close to the file in case white forces a queen trade. A couple more improving moves later, Bob tries to gain some control of the e file with his rook contesting the white rook on e1. White threatens a pawn capture, but Bob defends. Both players agree to a draw. Upon analysis, both players had played over 90% accuracy according to the chess.com game review feature.

Board 3: Noor “The Prodigy” Datoo plays white; Charlie Clynick plays black

Noor starts off the game as an Italian and the game proceeds as a two knights italian. Noor makes a small inaccuracy and allows d5, which Noor has to take otherwise he loses a pawn. Black retakes with the f3 knight and Noor trades light squared bishop for the knight. Noor tries to get rid of black’s centralised queen with c4, but this allows black to check Noor’s king with the dark squared bishop. Noor has to block with his queenside knight and Noor castles getting rid of the pin. Black trades bishop for knight and black applies more pressure to Noor’s position by attacking Noor’s vulnerable d3 pawn. Noor pushes the pawn to d4 but black castles queenside and once again threatens to win a pawn. Noor again pushes his pawn to d5, but black continues with knight to a5 attacking the c4 pawn. Noor defends and attacks the knight with queen to a4, black defends the knight with his b pawn.

Noor tries to protect one of the doubled c pawns with his rook, but black again attacks Noor’s pawns this time with a skewer of pawn and rook. Noor is forced to give up a pawn, but he pushes the c pawn to attack black’s queen an black takes the pawn on d5. Noor tries to pin black’s bishop to the black queen with one of his rooks, black offers a queen trade but Noor refuses and moves his queen. Black advances his e pawn to attack Noor’s knight. Noor moves his knight and defends with his dark squared bishop which also blockades the open d file. At this point Noor is in quite an unpleasant position and the odds are against him, but black blunders and allows either Noor’s knight to take the light squared bishop or for Noor’s c pawn to take on b6. Either of these moves would bring the game back to also equal, unfortunately Noor doesn’t see these moves and the advantage remains in black’s favour.

However, black makes a couple of positional blunders in a row and the advantage changes greatly in Noor’s favour! Noor manages to force black’s queen away from an undefended knight and Noor wins a piece! An amazing turn around for Noor and an amazing spot. Noor continues to attack and make some small positional changes to make it easier for him to attack black’s vulnerable king. Noor does make a couple more inaccuracies, but nothing too significant to allow black back in the game. Although, Noor keeps making inaccuracies and eventually he makes a positional blunder by allowing black to push a pawn to e2. Noor continues to try to rip apart black’s king with pawns, but Noor sacs a rook in the process and now has a bishop for a rook.

A few moves later Noor realises the trouble he’s in and he resigns when a checkmate in inevitable. An unfortunate loss for Noor, but it was against a very strong and underrated opponent. Both players looking like they will be 1700 in the future or even higher, and it was a spectacle of a game where both players had chances and it wasn’t such a straight forward game.

I shall put a link to the game here (https://www.chess.com/a/JmiFkdDxJdyp?tab=analysis) in case any readers wish to analyse it.

Board 4: Dan Watson plays white; Yuvraj “The Silent Detroyer” Sadhra plays black

The game starts as an italian and develops into a giuoco piano game. White chooses to pin Yuvraj’s knight to the queen and white trades the bishop for the knight as Yuvraj plays h6. Yuvraj centralises a knight on d4 and white counter attacks with knight to b5, and Yuvraj retreats his queen to d8 to deal with the threat of losing a rook. White gets rid of Yuvraj’s central knight by playing c3 and Yuvraj chooses to take white’s knight on f3. White recaptures with his queen, which means his queen and bishop are threatening mate in 1. Now Yuvraj of course sees this and defends it by playing c6, which attacks the b5 knight. Black gets scarred of losing the knight so he plays knight to a3, which misses mate in 1. Yuvraj now defends against mate once again by playing queen b6, which does defend against mate but it allows white to force Yuvraj to move his king without castling.

White then traps Yuvraj’s bishop and Yuvraj fires back by hitting white’s bishop. White take Yuvraj’s bishop but Yuvraj has to move his queen and Yuvraj is unable to retake, so he is down a piece. White increases the pressure on Yuvraj by lining up a rook to black’s king and Yuvraj pawn grabs with check. Black does the same later on, and white castles 22 moves into the game. Yuvraj lines up his rooks to white’s king and attacks once more with his light squared bishop, meaning white has to move his pawn forward, but white plays g4 which allows Yuvraj to sac his bishop for a devastating attack. White doesn’t retake and runs his king back to the centre of the board. Yuvraj keeps on attacking and checking, and a few moves later black blunders his queen with check, and white resigns.

Board 5: Oskar Rudczenko plays white; Nigel Smith plays black

Oskar starts with the scotch game, and black centralises his knight but Oskar attacks with his f pawn and black puts his knight back to c6. This gives Oskar more tempo and a bigger space advantage, but black does fire back by putting pressure on Oskar’s centre pawns. Oskar retreats to defend the pawns and castles queenside. Black’s knight lunges forwards to g4 attacking Oskar’s dark squared bishop, but Oskar finds a nice tactic to avoid giving up the bishop for a knight, and forces black’s knight to move to h6 where is it trapped. Black castles queenside too, and Oskar encourages a knight for bishop trade leaving Oskar with two bishops and black has a dark squared bishop with a still trapped knight.

Black pushes his pawn forward to d5 and Oskar takes with his e pawn, but this allows for a very good move from black where Oskar is almost forced to accept a queen trade and lose a piece. However, Oskar has an intermezzo where he forks black’s rooks with his bishop. Black trades queens and takes a free bishop, but Oskar takes a free rook. After the exchanges, Oskar keeps black’s h6 knight out of the game with g4, which makes f7 and g8 the only squares for the knight. Oskar checks the black king and forks two pawns with his rook on the 7th rank. Black defends the c pawn but not the h pawn, which means Oskar can take the h pawn and a free knight. Black tries to make some counter play with checks and tries to go for a few tactics to win a piece, but Oskar avoids blunders and still is up a significant amount of material. Oskar then delivers a forced mate in 3.

Board 6: Edda Walker plays white; John Graham-Brown plays black

This game starts off as a petrovs three knights defence, but in a very strange move order with knight to c3 and e4 being played first. Both players trade off a couple of centre pawns and John blockages the e pawn from pushing with his knight on e5. Both players make small improving moves and white hangs a pawn, but then pins John’s knight to his queen and threatens to win the knight with a rook and bishop. White threatens a knight fork on the queenside, but John stops this and white blunders a piece. John does take a piece and white retakes, but white’s knight hangs out on d4 and John is the one to blunder a piece.

Both players make improving moves and they trade pawns in the centre and queenside, which leaves the d and c files open. White grabs some pawns with her queen and John attacks with a queen and bishop battery on white’s king. John keeps checking and white blocks the checks but John just takes the blocking pieces. John takes another free piece which means he is now a piece up on white. White threatens a queen infiltration and John proudly castles kingside 31 moves into the game with both his g and h pawns on the 5th rank!

White tries to attack John’s queen, but John checks white’s king with one of his bishops and white blocks with a rook, but John takes anyway and keeps checking the white king. Soon after, white resigns.

Final Words

What a spectacle of an evening. So many eventful and exciting games by so many of Anstey’s players, and we finished the evening with 4.5 points to Anstey and 1.5 to Kirby, which keeps Anstey in 5th place in the division 4 league! Anstey 3 are now only one point behind Leicester University and only two points behind the 3rd team in the division: Braunstone 3. Anstey have now got two games against Heathcote arms one after the other, and Heathcote aren’t doing too well being 8th place out of 9 in the division. This means if Anstey can win either one or two against Heathcote then we have a strong chance of being 4th place. Anyway, that’s all from us today. I hope you all enjoyed the read, and see you next time.

Thursday 23/02/2023. Anstey 1 welcomed their friends Market Harborough 2 to the Methodist Church Centre for this LRCA Division 2 4^th vs 9^th fixture. It would be fair to say that the 2 sides, both promoted from division 3 last season, had fared differently in the league so far with Anstey challenging in the play-off places and Market Harborough rooted to the bottom of the table. But anyone can beat anyone on any given night of course!

With John returning from ill health Anstey fielded their regular side against a slightly weakened (on paper) Harborough. Anstey looked to have the edge with a rating total 7,031 vs 6,315. Posing for the photoshoot the players shook hands and battle commenced.

Julian’s game against David Curran on board 1 was the first to finish. Coming out of the opening roughly level, Dave, with white, took advantage of Julian’s automatic h6 in response to Bg5 with a nice tactic to win a pawn:

With the c-pawn pinned of course. Julian got some activity for the pawn deficit and white wasn’t able to castle. Play continued with white maintaining a slight advantage (+3.5 at one point) until Julian managed to coordinate his rooks and start harassing the white king. Dave pinched another pawn but then blundered retreating his bishop to f5 and then again to g4:

Allowing mate in 3 with 29. … Bg3+. 29. Rf1 was better but black, despite still being a pawn down, would have had the edge. A slightly lucky point for Julian and Anstey. Anstey 1 – Market Harborough 0.

In John’s latest comeback game, he faced off against Harborough’s captain Michael Garland (Jnr) on board 2. Mike equalised easily out of the opening and had a slight edge when John made a mistake allowing a nice queen move to threaten a fork and win a pawn:

Play continued 18. Nd1 Rxc2 giving black a near winning position. After the queens and one pair of rooks came off Mike picked up white’s loose a-pawn. With black’s king coming over to the queenside to assist, John set up a final trap:

Threatening the cheeky Nxc4+. Mike saw it and played 41. … Kc5 but after 42. Na4+ Kd6 43. Nb2 Kc5 43. Na4+ Kd6 44. Nb2 a draw by repetition was agreed. Of course, instead of moving back to d6 black should have played 42. … Kb5 and as long as he avoids 43. cxb4+ Kxa4?? 44. Ra1# he is still 2 pawns up and should be winning. So, a lucky half point for John and Anstey. Anstey 1½ – Market Harborough ½.

Mick played against Conor Hackett on board 4, a rematch from Market Harborough 3 vs Anstey 2 a few weeks back. That was a sharp game in which Conor triumphed, Mick was out for revenge this time with the white pieces. It was another sharp opening but Mick seemed to have it under control (witnessed by Matt on the next board when Mick said aloud that he’d play the odd-looking, un-developing but book move Bf1 on move 6…). Conor deviated from book giving Mick a +1 advantage but unfortunately a series of inaccurate moves followed and gave Conor a decisive advantage.

Mick blundered with 11. Bxd4??. Play continued 11. … exd4 12. Nge4 Qe5 with a -7 advantage. Conor kept up the pressure, swapping off all the minor pieces and hassling white’s king with his major ones. He did let his foot off the gas slightly swapping his two rooks for white’s queen but with advanced pawns on a5, b4 and c3 was still in control. Mick managed to rustle up a little counterplay but ultimately his rooks weren’t coordinated enough and eventually he dropped one to a queen fork. One of those horrible games when you’re on the ropes for most of it but well played Conor. Anstey 1½ – Market Harborough 1½.

This left Matt’s game against Jon Redding on board 3. Matt slightly misplayed the opening but actually got an ok position going into the middlegame. He pushed pawns in the centre and the queenside before mistakenly swapping pawns with cxb3. White’s space advantage gave him the edge and it was easier for Jon to manoeuvre his pieces forcing Matt into defensive duties. Matt missed a couple of opportunities to make a fight of it then played a couple of inaccurate moves in time trouble. With a minute left on the clock and his position deteriorating (and Mick’s game having just finished so the match score was level) Matt cheekily offered a draw. Jon though for a couple of minutes before accepting to secure the draw for his team. Another lucky ½ point for Anstey. Anstey 2 – Market Harborough 2.

A good result for Harborough:

Anstey miss the chance to move back up to 3^rd in the (still hotly-contested) division:

Anstey’s next game is against Wigston 3 on the 16^th March.

Anstey captain Matt Connor told Woman’s Weekly:
I’m very disappointed. In my last post-match interview, I warned about complacency against the division’s bottom 2 teams and that’s exactly what’s happened tonight. Having said that we could easily have lost this one so maybe it’s a point salvaged. We still have to play the 3 teams above us so there’s still a chance in the division.

Photography is credited to Oskar Rudczenko

Another night; another match. This time Anstey 3 play a home match against Melton Mowbray 3, but this time we’re hoping to get a win. Last time these two teams clashed it was a draw, but hopefully that doesn’t happen tonight as Melton have to default a board which means the score is already Anstey 1 – Melton 0 before the match even starts. Already a promising start for Anstey, and morale was boosted by the presence of the Anstey team 1 players as they play at home too.

For this match, Anstey 3 have Mike Griffiths, Noor “The Prodigy” Datoo and Yuvraj “The Silent Destroyer” Sadhra. All three are good players, but all three players are significantly outmatched by at least 80 elo points and with the most being 180 points. Who will win tonight? There’s only one way to find out, it’s time for the match to start!

Board 1: Ian Farquharson plays white; Mike Griffiths plays black

The game starts with an open sicilian, as Mike’s c pawn gets traded off for Ian’s d pawn. White develops his pieces on the queenside first, where as Mike tries to get his knights out and then prepare to castle. Just before white castles black trades knights with white and then both sides castle. Ian throws his kingside pawns at Mike’s king, which Mike doesn’t take very kindly to and sacs his light bishop to try and skewer Ian’s queen and king. Unfortunately there is no skewer as white can trade dark squared bishops. White manages to push his h pawn all the way to black’s kingside, and leaves it wedged between the h7 and g6 pawns making it an annoying thorn in Mike’s side.

White threatens mate in 1, which Mike spots and blocks it with his knight also serving to recentralise the off side knight. White threatens a fork and attacks Mike’s queen which Mike swiftly avoids and offers a queen trade. White repeats moves with his knight a couple of times and black trades queens and white retakes with a rook. Quickly after this, Mike moves his rook to c8 to take the semi-open c file, but white’s light bishop is monitoring the c8 square, which white promptly takes. Mike still has the c file, but is down a rook. Mike tries to win a pawn with his knight, but white offers a rook trade forcing to make Mike take or risk losing pawns. Mike resigns, which puts the score on equal terms.

Anstey 1 – Melton 1.

Board 2: Noor “The Prodigy” Datoo plays white; Peter Smith plays black

The game starts as an exchange philidor defence, where Noor retakes with the queen instead of the knight. Black of course develops his knight to c6, but Noor pins the knight with his light squared bishop. After black defends the pin Noor trades his bishop for the knight. Noor finishes his development and castles queenside. Peter shoves his c pawn into Noor’s face to attack the white queen, but Noor simply wipes it off by retreating his queen. Noor then presses the attack with e5, which forces black to take and offer a queen trade as Noor as a dangerous queen and rook battery all the way down the open d file.

Instead of trading queens, Noor moves his queen to the e file in front of his other rook, and black moves his to a5, which allows Noor to release a devastating and disgusting tactic of playing knight takes f7. Black cannot retake with his king otherwise he’ll lose both bishops, but he can’t retake with his light bishop otherwise it’s mate, so the only other move he can play is castles kingside. This minimises the damage a little as this is only a trade of a knight and bishop, but white is winning by a landslide. The computer thinks Noor’s current position is +13 in Noor’s favour. Although, there was a way Noor could try to win the bishop, which was to play knight to h6 check, which does still hang the knight, but if Peter takes it with his g pawn he opens up his king leading to a very dangerous attack against the black king.

The game continues with black pressing his pawns forward on the queenside, and Noor gathering his minor pieces around black’s king. Noor begins by trading his knights and then trading dark squared bishops, whilst black continues his pawn storm on the queenside. At this point, black doesn’t seem to care and is just allowing Noor to smash black off the board. Noor now uses his rooks to check the black king, and tries to create a mating net which Noor successfully does. After a rook trade, black continues his attack on the queenside, and at this point it’s now mate in 7, which Noor does find! Noor bring his other rook to the fifth rank, and one final blunder from black where he plays f5 and bring the position from mate it 7 to mate in 2. Noor finds it again, and black resigns. A very impressive performance from an already impressive player! Well done Noor!

Anstey 2 – Melton 1

Board 3: Steve Martin plays white; Yuvraj “The Silent Destroyer” Sadhra plays black

The game starts as a giuoco piano game, with Yuvraj’s dark squared bishop getting attacked by a couple of pawns before landing on b6. A move later white’s kingside knight goes back to it’s home square, which allows Yuvraj to threaten mate in one with queen to h4. Steve plays e2 and Yuvraj attacks the white queen with bishop to g4 and white responds by blocking the attack and attacking the black queen with knight back to f3. Yuvraj retreats his queen and trades his bishop for the knight and then trading queens to damage white’s kingside pawns structure. Although, white uses the double pawns to double pawn break through black’s centre on e5.

White continues to apply small amounts of pressure to black’s position, but finally Yuvraj manages to castle. Yuvraj centralises his queenside knight onto d5 with a check, so white moves his king to d2, which blunders a knight fork on b3. Yuvraj is now up an exchange which is a good improvement to his position. Yuvraj then goes after the lonely h pawn, but when white centralises his knight, Yuvraj tries to force a trade by checking the white king and attacking the central white knight. White’s king side steps the check and Yuvraj takes the white knight, allowing white to gain a protected past pawn.

Yuvraj then offers a bishop trade, but then white checks the black king and attacks a black rook. However, Yuvraj makes a fancy move by moving the other rook to c8 which offers a rook trade no matter how white takes. White refuses the trade and moves his rook, but this allows for Yuvraj to advance his rook with tempo on the white king. Yuvraj now moves his rook, but white makes another attack by threatening to win a pawn. Yuvraj doesn’t have to move his king to defend, but he does and he moves the wrong way, it’s now mate in 2 for white!

White takes the pawn with the rook, Yuvraj only has one move, but white doesn’t find the mating move! Instead of playing bishop to e7 check he plays rook to d7 check trying to find a discovered check on the black king to win some material. The discovered attack doesn’t quite work for white, as black can move the king to defend, but only now does white play bishop to e7 check and white loses a rook for free! White resigns and Yuvraj wins by the skin of his teeth! A bit of luck is all a chess player needs sometimes.

Anstey 3 – Melton 1.

Final Words

Finally Anstey 3 get another win! Which means we’re now in 5th place on the leaderboard rather than 6th! Well done to all the players of the third Anstey team for this great result! The next match we’ll be playing is on the 16th of March and we’ll be playing against Ashby 4, which is the top team in the league by 4 points, which is a huge margin. Not sure how we’ll do in that match, but we have been drawing a lot of teams, we have even drawn against the current second and third team (Loughborough 3 and Braunstone 3). We did have a close game the last time we played against Ashby 4 too, so who knows what will happen on the 16th.

Anyway, see you all after the 16th! I’m sure there’ll be some good games had not matter what happens, Ashby are always a good team to play against.

Playing Loughborough yet again with a similar team, as last time we had Noor, Mike and myself playing against Loughborough. This time we’ve got Yuvraj and Bob playing with myself, Mike and Noor. Not much of an eventful start. The venue for the Loughborough club normally opens at about 7:30pm, so there’s a bit of a rush to get all the boards set up. Once everything is set up, it’s time to start playing!

Photo credited to Noor’s dad, which was taken just after the games started.

Board 1: Bob Grindrod plays white; Ben Carpenter-Friend plays black

The game starts with what looks to be a kings indian defence at first, but then black plays d5 on his third move, which turns this into a grunfeld defence. Bob plays this like a queen’s gambit with connected d and e pawns with a c pawn attacking black’s centre. Although, the game starts to get zesty as black plays c5 counter attacking white’s d pawn. A couple of trades occur and black moves his queen to a5 to retake on c5. Bob mis calculates the position and plays e4, which falls into black’s favour as Ben takes on e4 with his knight. Bob’s knight is pinned to his queen by the black queen. To try to counter this Bob attacks Ben’s queen, but Ben goes down a forcing line with exchanges the queens off the board, but leaves black up two pawns.

Bob does manage to castle and develop his bishops, but they are stuck on the edge of the board not really doing a lot. Black starts advancing his pawns on the queen side and Bob tries to create counter play for himself, but black shuts this down and locks the queenside for a few moves before black rotates his knight to force Bob to move his light bishop and forcing a Bob to trade his bishop for a knight. In an open position with no bishops is quite bad for white, as black still has a bishop, which are regarded as snipers of the chess board. A couple of moves later a Bob blunders a bishop skewer of his knight and rook. Bob chooses to keep his knight alive and take two pawns in exchange for the rook, but Bob throws in the towel as black forces a rook trade, which would leave Bob in a rookless end game with a knight against black’s bishop and rook.

Loughborough 1 – Anstey 0. Bob not having a good streak of games over the last month, but with losses comes experience and knowledge. I’m sure there’s a win somewhere down the line for Bob.

Board 2: Peter Hickman plays white; Mike Griffiths plays black

The game starts off with d4 d5 and e3 e6 with some piece development on both sides. White ends up with a stone wall kind of set up with f4 being played and Mike ends up with a queens gambit set up that would normally occur when playing white. A few moves later Peter has castled and Mike trades his c pawn and develops his dark bishop. Mikes also castles and white plants his knight on e5 with the support of his f and d pawns. Whilst Mike reroutes his knights Peter starts throwing his kingside pawns towards Mike’s king, which is quite weakening but it is a fairly closed position so there is a chance that white’s king is fairly safe. Mike trades knights and white ends up with connect 4. Mike then hits the head of the pawn link with f6 and trades the pawns off, then Mike trades the knights off and further improves his position before starting to make trades with white.

Firstly, Mike trades the dark bishops, then he chooses to trade off one of his rooks and then Mike brings his last rook into the fight. Peter decides to trade the last of the rooks off the board and offers a queen trade, which Mike doesn’t mind but he plays g5 first. After this both players agree to a draw.

Loughborough 1 1/2 – Anstey 0 1/2. Mike does seem to like his draws.

Board 3: Noor “The Prodigy” Datoo plays white; Keir Hayden plays black

The game starts as an italian with black developing both his knights, then Noor develops his queenside knight but black executes the centre fork trick, which means black took Noor’s only centre pawn, Noor retook with a knight and black played d5 to fork the c4 bishop and knight on e4. Noor takes the d5 pawn with his bishop and retreats his knight to c3 which attacks the now advanced black queen. Keir retreats his queen and plays bishop g4, which pins Noor’s knight to his queen. Black castles queenside, Noor develops his last minor piece and Noor captures black’s advanced knight on d5, which offers a queen trade. Black doesn’t refuse this offer, but takes one of white’s knights instead and then takes white’s queen.

The game continues with both players dancing black’s light bishop with white’s knight across the queenside. Black develops his last minor piece and Noor castles. Noor starts to march his queenside pawns towards black’s king, but Keir stops this by counter attacking Noor’s pawns and Noor engages in a pawn trade. Noor also offers a dark bishop trade which black does accept, and protects his b pawn with his black rook. Noor attempts to double rooks but black refuses to let this happen and advances his b pawn to attack white’s knight. Noor moves his knight back but Keir keeps advancing his pawn right in front of Noor’s rook. Noor simply places his knight back to c3 and continues to double rooks.

Black tries to counter attack Noor’s protected e pawn, but Noor simply captures black’s over-extended b pawn and captures the other pawn with check. Black advances his other rook into Noor’s position and pins the white knight to the only white rook. Noor tries to advance his kingside pawns, but black pushes in the centre. Although, his opens up a rook trade for Noor as he moves his knight and both rooks stare at each other, but if black takes the white rook Noor can fork the rook and king. Quite the fancy manoeuvre, but this is in black’s favour as the computer says it’s -4 for Keir. However, black takes the wrong way and ends up trading a rook for a knight, so if black traded rooks he would’ve been winning as he would have a past pawn. This version of the game doesn’t allow black a past pawn, and Noor is now winning with +2.6 as the computer evaluation. At this point, Keir cheekily offered Noor a draw, which Noor instantly declined.

In the next few moves, Noor simply advanced his rook to the black side and started cutting down black’s pawns with check, and once he did that he aimed his rook at the black bishop which was defending a pawn that stopped Noor’s c5 pawn from queening. There wasn’t much that black could do, as Noor advanced his passed g pawn and black could not stop both pawns from queening. Noor sacrificed his rook for the bishop and pushed his c pawn, and all black could do was resign.

Loughborough 1 1/2 – Anstey 1 1/2!

Board 4: Michael Bordiak plays white; Yuvraj “The Silent Destroyer” Sadhra plays black

The game starts with white playing the london system, and Yuvraj plays symmetrically and a mirrored position occurs on the board on move 6, but on move 7 white plays h4 and Yuvraj plays queen to a5. Michael develops his queen to the queenside as well, and both players trade a pawn and a piece. Black then puts more pressure on white’s pinned knight, which white deals with by castling. Yuvraj takes the c3 knight and again on c3 as white retakes with his queen. Black castles and white trades pawns and Yuvraj retakes with his knight. Both players continue to develop their pieces and improve upon their positions, but suddenly Yuvraj takes white’s weak c pawn and it’s sufficiently protected. Yuvraj mistakenly took on c3 and is now down a piece!

Black continues to gently improve his position and double rooks on the open c file, which white occupies with one rook. This plays into quite the plot twist as white moves his king to f2, which blunders a rook! What on earth is going on?! Such a crazy start to the game. The computer is taking a rollercoaster ride by evaluating the position as +4 for white only a few moves ago, but now it’s -4 for Yuvraj!

Afterwards, the game continues with Yuvraj’s rook getting behind enemy lines and assisting black pawn marches down the kingside. White tries to harass the black rook with his bishops (white’s only remaining pieces), but Yuvraj simply moves his rook out the way and into a safe spot. White tries to create some play on the kingside too, but it falls flat when black counters the counterplay. White tries to attack with his king, but black uses his king to solidify the position and white struggles to defend against black’s free resigning rook. After a bit of “pawn grabbing” Yuvraj now has two passers on the queenside, and white can try to hold off the avalanching pawns but eventually Michael will have to sacrifice his bishop and black will be completely winning.

The game finishes just as white tries to stop the a pawn from promoting and black pins the white bishop to white’s king. Michael resigns leaving Yuvraj the silent victor of the game.

Loughborough 1 1/2 – Anstey 2 1/2!

Board 5: Oskar Rudczenko plays white; Stuart Gordon plays black

The game starts off as a closed sicilian with both players developing their knights and white pinning black’s knight to his queen. Black then plays queen to a5 which dodges the pin and pins one of white’s knights. A big trade then occurs in the middle of the board where Oskar sacrifices a knight in exchange for another one of black’s knight and as the dust settles white’s queen is on d4 and black has no g pawn and doubled f pawns. Black shoos white’s queen away from the centre and white tries to castle queenside. Luckily, before castling, black plays bishop h6 which would have skewered the white king and queen, so Oskar simply moves his queen out the way and attempts to castle kingside instead. Stuart struggles to know what to do and tries to lift his rook up and fianchetto his light bishop to castle queenside.

At this point, Oskar missed that he could’ve trapped black’s queen with b4, and only sees it after he grabs a pawn, but the computer evaluates that Oskar is winning by +3.5. Stuart sees that his queen can be trapped and moves the queen out into fresher air before castling queenside. However, Oskar mounts up the pressure as he doubles his queen and rook on the d file targeting black’s backward d pawn. Black defends well, but Oskar keeps going forwards with b4 and knight to d5 with check. Stuart tries to poke at the white position, but Oskar defends well himself and black trades off the powerful knight helping Oskar to make connect four on the queenside.

Stuart tries to break up the connect four with b5, but Oskar gladly takes the pawn as this opens the c file for his rooks and queen. The computer evaluation is now +6.5. Oskar brings his rooks and queen to the c file immediately and makes alekhine’s gun, which is where the queen teams up with both rooks on one file of the board. Black tries to make counter play, but Oskar wins black’s bishop, so now black has a queen and a rook vs a rook, bishop and queen. It is +10! Black starts to grab pawns and tries to make counter play. Oskar makes room for his king and sets up a trap to win black’s queen, but Oskar doesn’t realise his rook hangs, and now the evaluation goes from +63 to -5. Oskar tries to stay in the game, but there’s not much he can do as black threatens checkmate, and the only thing Oskar can do is sacrifice his queen to avoid the checkmate. A devastating blunder; one that Oskar will feel for a while.

Loughborough 2 1/2 – Anstey 2 1/2; the final result is a draw.

Final Words

It’s another draw for Anstey 3, which is not what we’re looking for but it is not a loss at least. At the moment the third Anstey team are still in the middle of the div four league table in 6th place out of 9, which is not too bad still as a couple of wins will get us in the upper half of the leaderboard and possibly in the top 3 of the division! All I can say for my team is it’s been a good hustle so far and we can make it into the top half of the division! I believe that we have the potential as players and as a team!

The next match Anstey 3 have will be against Melton Mowbray 3 on the 23rd February and Melton are in last place of division four, so we can beat them! We have 6 matches left and 4 of those are against teams in the bottom half of the division, so the future looks promising for the third Anstey team!

See you all after the 23rd, and thanks very much for reading!

Thursday 09/02/2023. Anstey 1 made the long, arduous journey to the bowls club in Kirby Muxloe for this LRCA Division 2 fixture against friendly rivals Kirby Muxloe 1 (although one town’s very like another when your head’s down over your pieces, brother). Without the services of John Robinson due to ill health (we wish you all the best John), super-sub Boris Lazarov was once again called-up.

As the venue very slowly began to warm up, the captains exchanged team sheets. With the teams evenly matched on paper (7,175 vs 6,933) it was going to be a close contest. The players shook hands and battle commenced.

Mick Sandham’s game against Ray Townsend on board 3 was the first to finish. In a repeat of the reverse fixture Mick was hoping to do the double over Ray. Coming out of the opening with more space and a lead in development, Mick brought his queen into the game and starting probing black’s defence to make weaknesses. Ray brought his queen over to defend and to try an exchange of queens but was so focused on it he dropped a piece, oops.

Which fails to 19. Bxf5 of course. Ray carried on blitzing out moves to try and rattle Mick and create some counterplay on the queenside. Mick calmly ignored it, kept the pressure up on the kingside and then set a nice discovered attack trap to win black’s rook for a knight. A rook down, Ray resigned. Kirby 0 – Anstey 1.

Boris played Dave Walker on board 4. In what can only be described as a masterclass of handling the black pieces (91.2% accuracy), Boris calmly defended Dave’s attack and lured him into a tactical mistake:

Black’s h-pawn had been pinned for a couple of moves, Dave missed that 14. .. Ne7-g6 defended the pin. Play continued 15. … hxg5 16. Rxh8 Nxh8 and a piece up Boris proceeded to swap off the remaining white pieces and picked up an extra pawn in the process. In a hopeless position Dave resigned. Kirby 0 – Anstey 2.

In another re-match from the reverse fixture Julian Tarwid played Simon Lazarus on board 1. Coming out of the opening the position was fairly even but with Julian (as white) play more attackingly (is that a word?). Simon made a couple of mistakes but Julian didn’t take advantage, making a few mistakes his own. Julian sacrificed a piece for 2 pawns and an exposed black king but Simon defended well. In the end after a few queen checks from white a draw was agreed even though black appeared to stand better despite his dodgy pair of h-pawns:

The draw was sufficient to secure match victory so well done Julian. Kirby ½ – Anstey 2½.

Matt Connor’s game again Gijs Kruitbosch on board 4 was the last to finish. Matt had told the team going into the match that the game plan was to win with white and draw with black. Unfortunately, he took that a little too much to heart, opting for a really passive setup from the opening. This allowed Gijs as white to freely develop and slowly build up pressure. In an effort to get some play Matt expanded on the queenside but missed the opportunity to try and open files. White’s knights then got in behind the pawns and black was squeezed hard, really hard. As time ran short Matt missed a move that would have kept the defence up for longer but then blundered in time trouble giving Gijs the deserved win. Kirby 1½ – Anstey 2½.

Anstey move up to third in the (still hotly-contested) division:

Anstey’s next game is against Market Harborough 2 on the 23^rd February, a game in which they cannot afford to drop any points to keep their title aspirations alive.

Anstey captain Matt Connor told Inside Bowls:
I’m very disappointed with my personal performance after contemplating a much more combative line but a massive shout out to Mick and Boris whose wins brought home the bacon. With 6 games to go there is still all to play for! We just need to make sure we don’t slip up against the bottom 2 teams and we’ll be in the mix come crunch time.

Credit goes to OskarRud and Bobideco for this report.

Quite a nice evening of chess this was, and a little celebration as Yuvraj had won the minor section of the Atkins Congress rapidplay in Mountsorrel on the 15th January. Everyone clapped as he entered the club, even the Ashby 5 players clapped for him; no hints for future away teams visiting Anstey ;).

Anyway, the games started just before 7:30pm, and each team had six players this time. Those fighting for Anstey (in board order starting at board one) were Bob Grindrod, Noor Datoo, Aarav Sinha, Yuvraj Sadhra, Oskar Rudczenko, and John Graham-Brown. It was a fairly evenly match night, with Bob outgrading his opponent by 130 rating points. Like in a lot of the Anstey 3 matches, a lot of our boards were outgraded by their opponents but still a strong team as we have drawn 5 of our 8 matches so far. Hopefully we’ll win one or two, which should help us to finish in the top half of the scoreboard.

So let the games begin! I wonder how Bob on board one will do.

Board 1: Mick Brown plays white; Bob Grindrod plays black.

With Ashby requesting six boards, Bob from the B-team stepped up to the occasion and played against Mick Brown from Ashby. Our teammate met his opponent’s d4 in the Trompowsky lines with his usual d5-based reply, only for the players to see a transposition of the Bg5 Classical variation of the French (“El Presidente” will be proud of you, Bob). Bob’s opponent decided to exchange his bishop for the f6-knight and expanded on the dark squares, thus squeezing the range of the Bob’s own dark-squared bishop. Our teammate replied by chasing away the white e4-knight with a pawn push after a few developing moves, and before long, the players had castled opposite sides in anticipation of a hectic attacking game. Our teammate tried to prepare his pawn storm, but after some manoeuvring from White, our teammate found himself in a piece shuffling battle instead. Both players tried to gain some sort of positional advantage through the latter shuffling with White attacking Black’s c-pawn while Bob was trying to get his pieces on active attacking squares while not blundering anything. Eventually, the bishops and a pair of rooks were exchanged and found himself controlling the open file, our teammate rushed with his knight to start the attack, falling victim to the Steinitz rule and freeing the remaining white minor piece, which laded on d6, supported by the long chain of pawns starting from h2. Due to the restricted area of influence of the black pieces, our teammate could not start a successful pawn storm and after evaluating the draw-ish nature of the position (in spite of the engine liking White more with +1.0 evaluation) the players decided to avoid blunders in time trouble and shook hands agreeing to a draw. A solid draw for Bob.

Anstey 0.5 – Ashby 0.5, next was Noor with an almost certain win (because he basically always wins this season)

Board 2: Noor “The Prodigy” Datoo plays white; Eden Watts plays black.

Flying high, in form Noor was scheduled to play 150 points (on paper) higher rated Eden Watts. Always the tactical player, “The Prodigy” opened with e4 and leads the game into the Italian opening. His opponent immediately gave up the advantage with slightly dubious pawn pushes and having the superior development, Noor offered a bishop exchange early in the game which Black covered with his knight. Our teammate missed the opportunity to engage in a long forcing sequence, emerging a full rook our of it, and instead exchanged his bishop for the opposing knight and immediately put pressure on Black’s advanced e4-pawn which he subsequently won with one of his knights. Black tried to pressure our teammate’s knight, creating a battery on the g1-a7 diagonal, only to find his bishop trapped and only able to exchange itself for the white knight. A beautiful tactic followed by Noor who temporarily sacrificed his light-squared bishop for a the remaining black e-pawn, only to take it back after a check which both disrupted Black’s king safety and restored the material advantage for our teammate. The Ashby player activated his rook and started harassing the white lady, but after some outstanding manoeuvring, “The Prodigy” tucked his queen into a safe position, preserving his g-pawn and material gains in the process. Given plenty of tempi by his opponent, Noor seized the opportunity to consolidate his position and activate his pieces and before long the white queen activated itself and picked up the black b5-pawn. Flustered by the power of the white lady, the Ashby player tried to create a counterattack against the white king, only to fall victim to a beautiful checkmate in one, delivered swiftly by “The Prodigy”. Another win for Noor who is flying high in the Leicestershire league this season.

Anstey 1.5 – Ashby 0.5. Aarav was on the next board looking to come back on the winning path.

Board 3: Neil Roberts plays white; Aarav Sinha plays black.

Aarav was scheduled to play 180 points higher rated Neil Roberts from the opposing team. The players opened with their King’s pawns and before long our teammate found himself facing the Ponziani Opening – an opening previously regarded as dubious but regaining popularity nowadays, with IM Eric Rosen being one of its famous proponents. Aarav replied with (I am fairly certain he is perfectly aware of this) the Jaenisch Counterattack (as per chess.com evaluation), and the players started mobilising their forces. While White was busy trying to support his weak(ish) e4-pawn with his queen and d-pawn, our teammate decided to castle quickly and strike in the centre with d4. The Ashby player pinned Aarav’s knight with his dark-squared bishop, only to be chased away to an unwelcoming diagonal and after the black lady unpinned herself, White found nothing better to do than to push h3 and wait for the Anstey player to lead the game. Found himself with a slight advantage based on the Stockfish 11 (depth = 20, powered by chess.com) evaluation, Aarav chose to advance his d-pawn, giving his opponent the opportunity to close the centre. White ignored this opportunity and instead decided to go after Black’s e-pawn, currently weakened by the positioning of the f6-knight, but this plan ended up being too slow, as our teammate started an expansion in the centre, trading his dark-squared bishop in the process and placing an amazing knight on d4, attacking both the white queen and light-squared bishop. Moreover, the remaining white knight was completely stuck on the first two ranks, resulting in an evaluation of -3.67 in Aarav’s favour. Unfortunately, Aarav missed the opportunity to force open the centre and pick up White’s d-pawn and continued his Q-side expansion instead. The Ashby player finally managed to equalise at move 17 after tucking his king away on the K-side, but our teammate continue to be active, bringing his a8-rook into the game and continue with pushing his Q-side pawns. However, White manged to activate his knight, supporting his a-pawn and stopping the backward black c-pawn in the process while also putting pressure on e5. The Ashby player decided to give up the good positioning of his knight in order to pick up the latter, and after some solid defence from Aarav he managed to activate his position himself and attacked the white king position with his queen. After White defended, our teammate offered a queen exchange which the Ashby took, having the extra pawn. Unfortunately, Aarav missed the opportunity to take a huge advantage by picking up the white bishop with a check and instead took back the queen with his h-pawn. In a few moves, White accumulated a significant advantage, only to fall victim to his greed and lose the exchange due to a beautiful knight fork from Black. The players entered a tricky endgame where material was equal, but immediately the evaluation bar started playing a tennis game as both players were struggling to navigate the best plans according to the engine. Nevertheless, after a rook exchange Aarav managed to equalise and did a lovely tactic to win one of the bishops. Unfortunately, with the time going, White managed to consolidate his position with a7 and Bb8, leaving Black only the option to try and checkmate the white king with his rook and king with limited help from the remaining black bishop, but under the time pressure, the players agreed to a draw. Nevertheless, an excellent comeback for Aarav in a very hard fought game.

Anstey 2 – Ashby 1, next was “The Silent Destroyer” on board 4.

Board 4: Yuvraj “The Silent Destroyer” Sadhra plays white; Joshua Cherrington plays black.

The game starts with e4, e5 and the opening is a four knights game along with bishop c4 and bishop c5. Both players mirror each other, or black mirrors white for a few moves. However, we get some differences when black decides to castle kingside, and white puts his queen on e2. We get a couple of different pawn moves as well and we get another mirror with both players offering a bishop trade with bishops going to e3 and e6. Yuvraj castles queenside and black takes a trade of light bishops. Both players refuse to trade dark bishops and Yuvraj pushes his c pawn in front of black’s dark bishop forcing Joshua to play bishop a5, which points the bishop towards Yuvraj’s c3 knight. Yuvraj doesn’t move his knight and instead plays queen to b5, which means when black takes white’s knight Yuvraj ends up with a slightly open king, which is more vulnerable to attacks.

Now this is where a lot of trades happen: Yuvraj takes most of black’s queenside pawns, and Joshua takes white’s centre pawns. Afterwards, Yuvraj trades his dark bishop for one of black’s knights, and takes another pawn. Then black offers a queen trade, but Yuvraj refuses and his rook and knight get forked by a pawn. Yuvraj then moves his rook to assist his queen, and Joshua takes on g2 with tempo (attacking white’s rook on h1). Yuvraj pins black’s knight to his queen and there isn’t a way to save the knight, but black plays queen to a6 which attacks the a2 pawn and covers f1 which is also covered by black’s rogue pawn on g2. Yuvraj doesn’t see this and he has to sacrifice a rook for a queen, which black gets back after the g2 pawn promotes.

From this point forward, it is checkmate in 13 moves for black. To Joshua’s credit he does follow the mating line very accurately for 5 moves and being 1200 that is quite impressive. However, Joshua trades queen’s instead of trying to carry on mating Yuvraj, which makes sense because black is up a rook, which means he can still win even without a queen. Black threatens mate in 1 and Yuvraj sacs his rook to make a getaway for his king, which is the best move according to computer but it’s not a great position for white. After some rook shuffling and pawn pushes, Yuvraj resigns. Yuvraj did do quite well throughout the game, but I think it was his greediness to capture black’s pawns that got the better of him.

Anstey 2 – Ashby 2. How is el captain getting on?

Board 5: Graham Bird plays white; Oskar “El Capitan” Rudczenko plays black.

The game starts off with d4 and d5. Graham plays an unusual bishop to e3, and the game transitions into a french defence for black. However, Oskar doesn’t take on d4 with his c5 pawn, he pushes the pawn to c4, which locks down white’s position and makes it quite difficult for him to move his pieces on the queen side. White launches a knight forward to e5, and Oskar castles his king out of harms way. As Oskar retreats his queen to c7, Graham moves his knight forward to fork black’s bishop and queen. However, Oskar can check white’s king, which is still on e1, and unless white wants to lose the knight he has to move the knight back to c3.

Oskar then takes the lonesome knight on e5 and gains a pawn for his troubles. Then, Graham moves his bishop off of e3 and right to d4 to offer a trade of bishops, which Oskar is okay with, but he moves his knight to defend the bishop so he can trade on his terms. The bishops then have a short starring contest, until Graham throws a punch with f4 trying to dislodge Oskar’s bishop and it works. Oskar has to move his bishop or trade, which he admits he should’ve done instead of keeping the bishops on the board as the bishop starts to get quite annoying.

Graham then threatens a check mate in one, then tries to pry open black’s position with f5. However, Oskar moves his knight in to attack the queen, which Graham gladly trades off with his bishop. Although, Graham doesn’t manage to follow up on his attack, so tries to defend but this gives Oskar some time to defend his position and fix his pawn structure. Both players start to shuffle their pieces, but white then sacrifices a rook for a bishop and pawn. However, Oskar wins back the pawn straight away, and pushes a pawn up to f4, fixing his bishop into white’s position.

Oskar takes the open file with a rook, and white moves the knight forward which he must’ve been glad for because Oskar moves the other rook and blunders a fork on his rook and king. Down an exchange, Oskar replaces the locked bishop for the rook, and white moves the queen but this blunders a piece. With one push of his pawn this opens Oskar’s queen on white’s king whilst the pawn attacks another piece. Suddenly, this leads to a mate in 6, but Oskar doesn’t have to take the piece to checkmate. It’s a simple queen move to g3 to start the mate, but Oskar doesn’t see it (being a human not a computer) and takes the piece because why not.

A few moves later, Oskar offers a trade of queens to help his chances of winning, but black declines and moves his king out of the pin to move his queen. This is even worse, as Oskar can now pin the queen to the king with a rook. After some consideration, Graham resigns in a position that could lead to a mate in 8 moves. What a game, and Oskar had the advantage for most of the game according to the computer. White had a good chance in the middle by playing e4. This would make black’s centre pawns would crumble as Oskar had insufficient defending pieces on his d5 pawn. Lucky for Oskar white didn’t see this, as this would have been disastrous for him.

Anstey 3 – Ashby 2. Finally, lets take a look at the enduring John on board 6.

Board 6: John Graham-Brown plays white; Brian Wood plays black.

The game starts off with a sicilian defence style of opening with John putting his pawns in the centre and black opening lines for his bishops to develop quickly. John plays quite principled chess and Brian plays quite defensively, and John immediately being aggressive with e5, kicking the f6 knight away and black places it on e4 with the support of the fianchettoed bishop on b7. They trade knights and John castles whilst trying to create black weaknesses by trading pawns with his opponent and repositioning his knight to double attackers on the lonesome c5 pawn. As he repositions the knight, white’s knight attacks the over extended black bishop, which black has to retreat, allowing John to improve his position more so without much challenge.

Black tries to open the position, even though his king is still on e8. John sets up a bit of a trap to win a pawn, however, black places his queen on f6 allowing John to fork a bishop and queen, which forces black to trade a bishop for a knight. This occurred with John’s rook on d1, black’s bishop on d6, and John’s knight on d2. Although, according to the computer, it may have been better to play knight to b3 as this is winning material (a pawn) rather than trading material… probably. The computer is a lot stronger than most people, so I don’t really know; I’m just guessing. Just like everyone else really.

Anyway, John activates his rook and Brian finally castles. John wins the pawn anyway, and Brian threatens mate in one. John swiftly deals with this by playing g3, and black tries shuffling his bishop a couple of times as John relocates his queen. John hits the queen with his bishop, and goes for a very nice sequence of trades. John’s bishop x-rays a black rook through a white rook, and John’s rook can take a black bishop, so this allows John to trade a rook for a bishop but then trade a bishop for a rook. Quite fancy looking, and I’m quite glad and surprised John spotted this. John really is showing us how he has improved at chess, and John even had the upper hand for most of the game (quite a big upper hand too).

Although, with a couple of moves and pawn pushes later, John hangs a bishop, then a pawn, and then a rook. Not a great turn of events, but John does not resign. Again, John’s endurance shows itself, even in the face of a mate in 8, which Brain doesn’t spot as he’s not a computer; he is only human. On move 34 black had a mate in 6 and he started to follow the mating pattern, but it is quite a difficult mate to spot as the position doesn’t look like there is an imminent mate. However, the game continues and black does not know how to mate John. John stays fighting even when his king is in the centre of the board, and after almost 60 moves John is mated in the centre of the board. One eventful king chase that left the white king literally running for his life.

Anstey 3 – Ashby 3. Lets take a look at how this has effected the Leicestershire league scoreboards.

Final Words

Unfortunately, Anstey could not get a win, however the team’s position in the league doesn’t actually go down and nor does it stay the same. Anstey actually go up a place on the board as Leicester Uni haven’t played their 9th game yet, so briefly this puts Anstey in 5th place out of 9 teams. Considering how Anstey have faired in previous seasons, it’s a lot better of a season than they might’ve imagined.

Once again, Ashby were a good set of players and had great sportsmanship too, not allowing their graceful reputation to budge. It was a great night of games, and an Ashby player stayed later than the rest to, so a couple of us played some games with him. We had a laugh after the match, tasting some polish jaffa cakes with the resident ginger GM.

The next match Anstey has is an away match against Braunstone 3, and this too might be a good match as we have some good players and Braunstone have some good players. For now, it’s a good bye from us, and we hope you enjoyed the read. Take care folks!