Captain’s Report
Surbiton A 6 – 2
|
Board |
Colour |
Surbiton
A |
Score |
|
Score |
|
1 |
B |
Mark Josse |
0.5 |
Russell Picot |
0.5 |
|
2 |
W |
Chris Briscoe |
1 |
Julian Ward |
0 |
|
3 |
B |
Nick Pelling |
1 |
Robin Haldane |
0 |
|
4 |
W |
Stefano Bruzzi |
0.5 |
Martin G Smith |
0.5 |
|
5 |
B |
Paul Shepherd |
0 |
Nick Keene |
1 |
|
6 |
W |
Ian Henderson |
1 |
F Caputo |
0 |
|
7 |
B |
Angus James |
1 |
Victor Odunaiya |
0 |
|
8 |
W |
Rob Harrison |
1 |
Selvarattinam Somupillai |
0 |
Another example of how anyone can beat anyone
else in this league. Having been properly stuffed 6-2 by
On Board 1 Mark played a nice positional game.
After equalizing in the opening he gradually pressed on the queenside and
Russell’s pieces became more and more passive as he desperately defended. This
was a quickplay finish and Mark took his advantage
into the ending. However it was very hard, given the limited time, to find the
correct way to win and having missed at least one clear chance, Mark had to
settle for a draw as Russell managed to regroup. Well played Mark, unlucky not
to win.
Board 2 saw Chris gradually build up an
advantage as he pressed on the kingside and in particular on the half-open
f-file. Eventually Chris’s attack grew to decisive proportions. Well played
Chris!
Board 3 saw much entertainment as Robin and
Nick went into tactical melee mode. Nick had won a couple of pawns out of the
opening but the complexities did not really ease even when the queens came off.
Robin tried to run his king-side pawns down the board as he ended up a piece
down. Nick kept his head and steered himself to a position with loads of
material up having neutralized Robin’s threats. Well played Nick.
Stef had a very interesting game against Martin on
Board 4 and always seemed to be the one pressing for the win. Martin’s knights
buzzed from one side of the board to the other, trying to distract Stef as much as possible. On moves 20 and 21 Stef missed opportunities to simplify down to a favourable
ending. During the time scramble Martin missed a chance to win a pawn. At the
adjournment it appeared that the position was essentially balanced and so a
draw was agreed without resumption. Well played Stef.
My game on Board 5 was a minor disaster for me.
After getting move-ordered by Nick very early on I ended up in a very passive
queen-less middle-game significantly behind in development and with plenty of
weak squares to try to defend. I think it should have been possible to hold the
position but I didn’t play accurately. Nick finished me off with a very neat
combination that won a rook.
Apologies to Ian, Angus and Rob for
not seeing enough of their games to give detailed accounts. However the speed in which they
dispatched their opponents was impressive and they really cashed in when bowling
at the
Paul Shepherd