Nottingham Central Chess Club

Much Dialogical Dialogue at the Grinder last night and a league point to celebrate, although it could easily have been a victory.

Thanks to John Dell turning up. A mix up meant we had six players. Sorry John. Got confused.

Lukasz was first to finish, having hot footed it by plane and bus and dressed in holiday fashion. Not sure what went wrong, but a long series of exchanges resulted in the loss of the major exchange, Queen for Rook.

Kevin Harvey took a huge lead in development and won in quick time. Well done Kevin.

Simon blundered in a tactical exchange, fought on bitterly but had to concede.

Mark returned to form to level the scores, looking well pleased with himself throughout the encounter with a powerful display.

All this in the first hour and twenty minutes, while my game was ratcheting up in tension. I played really well. Two pawns up and a passed a pawn sprinting for home. Tiredness and my opponents tricky counter play forced me to blunder. I had no choice. But with flags hanging my opponent felt he could do no better than to offer the draw.

Match Drawn.

Note, Nomads we’re significantly higher graded than us on boards 4,5 so a fair result.

Thanks,
Andy

Sorry for the delay in posting this, I was out of the country and failed to access the website. Alan

Results from Round 1; L.Kacprzak 0-0 K.Harvey (not played); A.Griffiths 1-0 M.Frings; K.Argyle 0.5 S.Foster; M.Radford 1-0 J.Dell; A.Lester 0-1 G.Gibson; T.Bostrom 1-0 S.Parham; M.James 0-1 A.Sutton; P.Allen 0.5 A.Meade.

Round 2 Pairings

G. Gibson v A. Griffiths

A. Sutton v M. Radford

S. Foster v T. Bostrom

A. Meade v K. Argyle

M. Frings v P.Allen

J. Dell v A. Lester

S. Parham v M. James

Matches to be played in October if possible. Possible extension into November due to the lateness of the 2nd round pairings.

We made the short journey to Gambit’s city centre lair and came away with the spoils against Gambit 3, getting Central’s new season off to the best possible start.

Alan and Steve on the top two boards produced dominating displays to give us a great platform on which to build. Alan was never in any danger against John Huthwaite and once he went material up converted with the minimum of fuss.

Steve’s participation was in doubt until a day or two beforehand due to a serious back injury but he played through the pain barrier to notch a very nice victory against Charlie Grainger. A pawn up in the middlegame, he gradually reduced Charlie’s queen and rooks to total passivity before delivering the killer blow.

Mark was lucky to escape with a draw on board 3 but that meant we could not lose the match, just needing another half point to win.

Andrew was holding his own on bottom board, pressurising his opponent without finding a way to win and eventually ending up with a drawn king and pawn endgame. Drawn that is until Andy blundered with Ke3 instead of Ke2, allowing his opponent, Peter Gorecka-Marshall, to take the opposition and the game. A “schoolboy error” as Andy lamented afterwards.

So, the match came down to Graham against Gary Hopkinson. Graham sacrificed the exchange early on and then produced a typically Petrosian-esque performance to squeeze out the required draw. Cue a round of cheers from the small Central area of the pub.

To be played in August/September. First named player has white.

L.  Kacprzak – K. Harvey

A. Griffiths – M. Frings

K. Argyle – S. Foster

M. Radford – J. Dell

A. Lester – G. Gibson

G. Forster – S. Parham

M. James – A. Sutton

P. Allen – A. Meade

(By Kevin Argyle)

It was potentially a tense and exciting last match for the second team with us needing a win (a draw would have been enough if the League decided only two would go down). Radcliffe & Bingham 2 also needed a win to stay up.

As it turned out, although we beat R&B at their place, it was a much stronger team that arrived at the King Billy. The result was never really in doubt, especially as we were missing Mark Radford and Pat Allen, and we lost 4.5-0.5. Simon got the draw.

Earlier in the season, I thought getting relegated would be a bit of a disaster but I have changed my view since. We are doomed to always battle against relegation in Division 4 so it will make a pleasant change to lead an assault on the Division 5 summit, not to mention a couple of inter-club matches (and an extra home game).

Last week we had a 4 round blitz tournament amongst 8 of us organised by Andy Sutton. It was the standard, enjoyable blitz fare, all blunders and mad time scrambles. Looking forward to more of the same throughout the summer. Come on down!

Are Central 1 promoted or not? We won’t know until next year’s league structure is finalised. Fingers crossed.

(by Kevin Argyle)

Two excellent results have given the second team a good chance of survival.

Last week we entertained unbeaten West Bridgford 3, already crowned champions, and almost beat them. Chris Budd was ‘staffed in’ but got the day wrong and so WB started with a default. Ironically this oversight may well have helped cost Chris’ own fourth team their Division 4 status.

We were able to put out a decently strong team and got off to a good start when Mark Radford beat an out-of-form Terry Lavelle, the latter just failing to make the time control in a lost position.

When Pat agreed a draw with Allan Brown we were guaranteed at least a vital point. Andy lost to WB captain Mike Hunter leaving Lukasz fighting a hopeless battle against Chris Fraser. The latter demonstrated how not to win R+K v K ending and just managed to win on time, both flags falling at around the same time but Chris claimed the win and Lukasz accepted. Our watching players protested but I agreed with Mike Hunter that the accepted result between the players should stand.

We travelled to The Willow Tree on Monday needing a victory to take things to the last game of the season). And win we did.

It was not our strongest team by any means with Mark Radford, Graham Gibson and Pat Allen all unable to play.

We ‘fielded’ a new player, John Harvey, who has been coming to the club a lot recently (we registered his details with the league earlier in the season) but has not played competitively since being a promising junior once upon a time.

Simon Parham registered a smooth win against Rob Garnet to put us in the driving seat but elsewhere, Lukasz was facing Chris Budd on board 1 and looking shaky, Andrew was losing to Chris Fraser, I went a piece down against Frank Hill and John went a piece down against Ed French.

Amazingly we won from this position. Although me and Andy both lost, Ed blundered badly against John, losing two rooks followed by resignation. Then Lukasz beat Chris on time, his opponent taking too long to make sure he had a winning endgame. 3-2 to us.

At the moment there are three going down instead of two, although this is not definite by any means.

Should be an interesting last game…