The Great Escape…?
(by Kevin Argyle)
Central 2 travelled to Radcliffe & Bingham on Tuesday night to play their second team with both sides needing points to escape the drop to the bottom tier. I was able to turn out a decent side and we made it count with a vital win. We have games in hand but West Notts’ thrashing of a weakened WB5 has made the task that much harder.
An hour in, and all games were fairly equal. Lukasz was playing very quickly as normal. No sooner had his opponent moved than Lukasz’ hand was hovering over the board ready to reply. In fact he was playing so quickly that the digital clock gave up and they had to replace it with an analogue one. A short time later he unleashed a devastating combination, taking a knight that if recaptured would have allowed a lethal ‘family fork’. His opponent, Charles Martin, wisely declined the recapture but a couple of moves later, a piece and the exchange down, resigned leaving us one up.
On board one, Mark was never in any trouble and with the straightforward plan of aiming his pieces at the opponent’s king, and with a bishop fork of his opponent’s king and queen unavoidable, put us two up.
Mick had much the worse of his game against Dorothy and also had to contend with a withering look of disgust after coming back from the bar with a soft drink instead of an alcoholic one. But it did the trick and he converted a nearly lost position into a win to make it 3-0 and allow the non-playing captain (myself) to relax and enjoy the rest of the match.
Pat had a decent position against Charlotte Attwood and went a pawn up but was unable to find a win and after giving the pawn back, agreed a draw leaving Andy Sutton to try and salvage a draw a pawn down against Ian Nicholson. At one point this looked very likely but Andy was in time trouble and felt he had to try something different. He allowed the exchange of queens and then it was all over. A good, strongly fought game though.
Can we avoid the drop? Watch this space.