Ox1 had a disastrous weekend, losing both matches to Wood Green 1 1-7 and North East England 3½-4½. Ouch!
Despite the setback, skip was pleased with our new-look team although he would rather like to see us field a completely different team in rounds 3 & 4!
Game of the weekend was undoubtedly Jon‘s fine win over IM Ravi Haria with the Black bits, averting the team whitewash in some style. Wood Green’s two GMs, one of whom is mighty familiar to us, put Oliver and Filip to the sword on boards 1 & 2: both our young players went very slightly wrong in the opening and didn’t get a second chance. If you play through Filip‘s loss (all games are online here) and wonder, like skip did, “why did he play 10. Nxd4 instead of a pawn recapture?”, listen to the explanation he got from GM Justin: “9. Qe2 was an error, he can’t recapture with a pawn because of 10. … b5 and 11. … Q(x)c3+. 10. Nxd4 covers 10. … b5. Perhaps he could play 10. 0-0 instead and sac a pawn or two”. Filip of course realised all this too late and was on the back foot thereafter. Curiously, he offloaded his g2 pawn on both days in almost exactly the same manner with the Black bishop dashing back to e4 and g6 both times. Must be a Filip thing.
On Sunday, the match against NE England was a nail-biter. We went 1-0 down quickly (Francesca’s Sicilian hacked by h4-h5), recovered to lead 3-2 with wins from Szymon & Joris [who admitted to being a tad fortunate that his opp missed a Bxh7+ tactic after 21. … Ne7 when “it’s the same as the game, minus the h7 pawn”]. After Matt drew on top board – it’s a while since he was last there – we needed to avoid defeat on boards 3 and 6 and both looked dodgy. Oliver‘s will-to-win attitude almost cost him the point as he turned down a perpetual and found his attack rebuffed. Fortunately Black didn’t find the right moves and took a perpetual himself in the final position. That left Dugg‘s game on 6, a real roller-coaster of a game if you switch on the evaluation functions. I am not going to comment further on that one – I’m just glad Dugg was there, playing both days and he surely must have been exhausted after playing 12+ hours in total. And then driving back to Middlesborough. Even Fabi & Magnus didn’t match that in their first two games! I owe him a beer.