Ipswich Sports Club is a very active place, so much so that the newly formed Chess Section already has 26 names taking part in its club championship (according to the table on the notice board anyway). And while we were playing our match, there was a mixed doubles tennis match taking place on the floodlit court in the rain outside. Such dedication! Unfortunately that activity is prone to invade the chess playing area, and the concertina doors are hardly sufficient to keep the noise out. Especially as they make even more noise when you need to open and close them to visit the loo. All very reminiscent of Felixstowe's Dooley Inn, and not somewhere you would want to play during the run up to Christmas. Ear plugs are worth considering.
  If you look at the stats, Bury, ISC and Manningtree are the highest rated teams (in that order) so we started the season thinking we would need to hold own against Bury and ISC and hope that we would score better than they do against the rest of the field. And while we did that against Bury (even though we were three men down) little did we imagine we would thump ISC, even with our full squad. Mind you it has to be said, we did have a slight head start when we discovered that for the first time this season they were without their board two, veteran Stephen Gregory.
  As the games got under way a common theme seemed to be running through the boards - expand the pawns, and after an hours play all boards were finely balanced (that's a euphemism for "didn't have a clue who stood better"). Panagiotis was the first to pick his way through the complications. His game started as a symmetrical English, with David Spence opting for the Botvinnik triangle formation (c5-d6-e5). Panagiotis failed to demonstrate any tangible opening advantage and went for a threefold repetition before move 30; this was probably not a very memorable game, but it gave us a crucial half point against their formidable board one.
  Phil then gave us our first full point of the evening. On move ten of a Caro-Kann he obtained a strong central pawn duo at the price of granting his young opponent the two Bishops. Phil then strove to keep the pawn centre under restraint, while his opponent tried to liberate it, and in conjunction with an open f-file, launch a major attack on Phil's king. To this end his opponent offered an imaginative but speculative temporary sacrifice of his knight on c3. Phil had to accept or go under but in the longer run his opponent had misjudged his attacking potential. Phil defended with central play v wing attack, taking over the central files, winning the exchange with the dark square bishop, whose counterpart had been allowed to be exchanged for a knight. Phil's opponent's back rank was weak and on move 24, Phil's queen took a bishop, putting itself en prise to his opponent's remaining rook. However, if taken he would be mated in one and if declined, would be left to play on with three pieces down, so instead he resigned.
  Of the remaining two boards, we looked to be winning on board one, but board three looked precarious, although according to Rowland, it was all under control. In an Italian, in which Rowland had spurned a fried liver, he played an early a4. But it was sometime before it advanced to a5, and by the time it got to a6 (unsupported by the way) it looked more of a liability than an asset, but in the end it proved to be the killer. Rowland played an outstanding game where every defensive move was an attack in disguise. His opponent may be a little rusty, returning for his first season in five years, but he is still a formidable force to be reckoned with and Rowland showed he can handle a quieter game just as much as one full of fireworks. And he finished the minor piece ending with precision, giving us a two point lead.
  Would we make it three with just Andy left to finish? As Black he faced Martin Fogg in a sharp, theoretical Richter-Rauzer Attack against the Classical Sicilian. Neither player knew the theory, and White offered a pawn sacrifice for nebulous compensation. When Andy seized a second pawn, a few moves later, forcing the exchange of queens, this should have been the end of the matter. However, to his credit, Martin continued to play actively, forcing Andy to play accurately, right until the end when both players were playing on the increments. On another day, Martin's tenacity might have been better rewarded.
  Coming away with 3½ points was more than we could have hoped for, and it puts us just half a point behind ISC in the table with a game in hand.

Once again we were upstairs tonight as the lighting problem in the main hall is still outstanding. And this seems to be the room of choice now, due mainly to the excellent lighting there. Mind you, it is a little bit cramped for two simultaneous matches, not helped by the fact that the smaller tables appear to have disappeared, and some of the longer ones are even longer. In spite of being significantly out-rated, Ipswich put up a spirited fight and made us work hard for our points. This result puts us second in the table and 3½ points off the lead, who we just happen to be facing in two weeks. That will be a crunch match and will no doubt go a long way towards determining who will be lifting the trophy this season. But back to tonight.
  Panagiotis and Rowland were relatively early finishers while Phil was making headway in his game where he had exchanged two minor pieces for a rook and two pawns. His perseverance paid off and he was eventually able to convert that into a win. With two and a half points from three, Andy was bringing up the rear.
  Andrew Shepherd as Black put up stubborn resistance against Andy in a Nimzo-Indian. Andy obtained a small advantage in a triple minor piece ending (B+B+N) vrs (B+N+N). The best that Andy could do was to trade pieces into a Bishop ending a pawn up. That ending was defensible with best play. However, Black had almost run himself out of time, and Andy converted his advantage without difficulty.

With three of our squad unavailable for this crucial match against fellow contenders Bury St Edmunds (the team with the highest average rating in the league), we feared we would go down heavily and suffer a huge dent in our hopes of keeping Ipswich Sports Club within touching distance. And while Bury were without two of their squad, they still out-rated us by an average of 135 points per board, so it was a great achievement to share the points with them, although we were so very close to causing quite an upset by actually winning the match.
  Jim finished first, which was a little ironic as his board was played at the slowest pace - about half that of the other three boards. After 1.e4 e5 Jim continued with the rarely seen Bishop's Opening, which explains the slow pace as both players carefully trod some unfamiliar paths. It was a solid performance, with little coming off the board, and with neither willing to risk everything on speculative manoeuvres a draw was agreed.
  It was some time before Graeme followed. He opened with a Sicilian in which his opponent gained a significant special advantage on the queen's side and Graeme came under a significant amount of pressure. His opponent miscalculated a piece exchange and recaptured with the wrong pawn and lost his b-pawn, or it could have been a deliberate sacrifice, for it didn't look like a pawn that could be held for very long. Graeme had a very long think before trying to hold on to it, for a couple of moves at any rate, and the position rapidly descended into a rook and bishop ending, with Graeme now a pawn down and a significant time deficit. And when the remaining pieces came off the pawn ending was looking decidedly precarious, but thanks to some very precise defending Graeme was able to hold on and keep the match score level.
  Meanwhile Panagiotis was putting in a tremendous performance on top board. His English had led to a fairly complicated middle game when his opponent ill advisedly captured Panagiotis's d-pawn with a bishop following which he immediately faced the loss of that piece. He had a very long think before responding, which meant he was not only material down he put himself so far behind on the clock that he ended the game on the increments. He managed to fight on however in spite of his material deficit until a pseudo rook sacrifice threatened mate in two. He declined the sacrifice of course, but Panagiotis followed it with a check whereby the only legal move was to accept the sacrifice, so he resigned instead.
  We now found ourselves in the unexpected position of being ahead, and an assessment of Bob's position gave us reasonable grounds for hope that things would end that way. Bob kept his usual Modern approach and developed very well to equalise out of the opening. The board was threatening to become pawn-locked and as the pieces were exchanged we entered a rook and bishop ending with seven pawns each. On top of that, the bishops were of opposite colours, so a draw looked decidedly possible. Time was running low for both players, and Bob's opponent was clearly not going to be satisfied until he'd exhausted all avenues. Had Bob been able to exchange the rooks a draw would be easy, but constant attempts to break through finally succeeded when Bob ran out of moves and had to resign when his bishop got trapped and could not be saved.
  Considering how things could have gone, we were very happy with a draw. And while we may be seven points off the top, we have two games in hand, so a couple of 3-1 wins and we're back in the fray. Not much to ask is it?

Our first match of the new season, and we were hoping to emulate the demolition job Ipswich Sports Club had inflicted on Sudbury two days earlier. After all, the title could well be decided on how well the top three teams handle the bottom three. Rowland got us off to a good start, finishing first, and some way. He quickly established an advantage with the white pieces and wasted no time pressing home with it.
  It was quite a while before Panagiotis made it 2-0. He faced a Dutch opening and had a slightly better position throughout the opening. His opponent started burning time on the clock and soon enough Black's position became unpleasant. Down to a few minutes, Black moved his knight to b4 and resigned after Panagiotis responded by playing a5 with tempo (and taking that square away from Black's a-pawn), as the knight would soon be captured.
  Phil made it 3-0 after a trendy White line in the Caro Kann Exchange System (6.h3) quickly led to a set-up where Black gets the 2 Bishops at the price of an isolani d-pawn. Then Lots of manoeuvring for an advantage by both sides with nothing tangible, until Black grabbed White's a4 pawn on Move 25, unleashing a ten move flurry of tactics almost from nothing. The isolani d-pawn unisolates itself and becomes the hero of the hour, advancing to e3, granting his comrades a monster attack against White's king, none of which the player of the Black pieces had planned or anticipated. White wards off mate at an overly high price in material, counters with verve, traps and tricks but has to resign on move 40.
  Three nil up, but the chances of getting a clean sweep were looking very slim. Something went badly wrong for Andy against Tim Lunn's anti-King's Indian Smyslov System. Tim achieved a huge space advantage with powerful constraining pawns on d5 and f5, and a half-open h-file from which to attack the Black King. Both players ran short of time, and either side might have won in the chaos of the final 20 moves. An entertaining game to watch, from which a draw was probably the only fair outcome.