Legal V Insurance

Match report from the Insurance Chess Club archive

This match was supposed to have been played at 11 Belgrave Road, but there was a mix-up over bookings for the 6th floor Conference Room. After various other dates had been suggested it was agreed that the match should be played at S.J. Berwin & Co. on the originally agreed date. As the Legal League does not have sufficient chess equipment it was agreed that I would take the equipment over to Gray's Inn Road on the day of the match, and bring it back on the following day. Before the match began David Malcolm said a few words about Vernon Rosoux, a Life Member of 88, who had unfortunately died a couple of days earlier, and there was a minute's silence. I had picked myself on board 16, hoping for a quick win. I should have known better! The match did not begin until just after 7 o'clock, so Ian Hunnable rushed in, hoping that he had just escaped a loss by default ("Major problems on the Central Line!" - Stephen Byers' fault again!), to find that the match had not yet started! Daniel Tunkel won the toss, but chose white on evens. David Cannan failed to arrive, so we started one down. John Philpott's opponent also failed to appear, but David Auger replaced him before the default time. Martin Page evened up matters by winning quickly, his opponent blundering. Ian Calvert then had a quicker draw than usual, but David Sedgwick "got annihilated". By 8:30 Gary Callan had won, John Philpott had made no headway with his extra time and had agreed a draw and Michael Wiltshire had won - "the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit strikes again", he said. "He grabbed the pawn!" By 8:45 Ian Hunnable had drawn and Anthony Kent had lost. His opponent had had a strong attack on the king's side and Anthony had looked in trouble for some time. By 9:00 Colin Bartlett had won, but Tony Paish had lost. Ian Reynolds then drew, leaving the score at 6-6, with four quickplay finishes left. Ian then suggested that I should concentrate on winning my own game, rather than on seeing how the other games were going! I took his advice and duly won the ending, in the last game to finish, turning round a 10 minutes' deficit on the clock . By then news had filtered through that James Aldred and Paul Barclay had won, but that David Malcolm had lost. So, a 9-7 win for the Insurance Chess Club, in a closer match than I had anticipated, considering that half their team was ungraded and that many of the others were well outgraded. -- Geoff Naldrett

Daniel Lindner