Insurance V Banks

Match report from the Insurance Chess Club archive

Before the match started United Banks defaulted four boards, so myself, Colin Bartlett, Stephen Humphrey and Ray Hamilton had default wins (the latter three not being required to travel). United Banks then arrived and announced that two more were not coming, so Anthony Kent and Paul Barclay had wasted journeys, the latter from Essex. By the default time, Julian Farrand's and Tony Paish's opponents had not turned up, but neither had Michael Wiltshire, so the match was played over seven boards only. James Aldred was the first to finish, agreeing a draw with Mike Jones selflessly in order to secure the win of the match! Ian Calvert drew soon afterwards, but word has it that he had earlier turned down the offer of a draw! Martin Page won on time, but by then was winning anyway. His opponent had had a king side attack, but it had been just too slow to win, whereas Martin was three pawns up on the queen's side at the end. John Skipworth tried a speculative bishop sacrifice against David Malcolm, but a quiet move by David won him the game. Mark Rich's game looked fairly even for most of the time, but then his opponent missed a tactic, lost a piece and resigned.David Sedgwick seemed to be having the worse of things for much of the game, but eventually a draw was agreed. Ian Hunnable eventually outplayed Dave Chambers and won more and more material until Dave resigned. So, we won the match by 13½ to 2½, conceding three draws and one default win. It was a pity that so many games were defaulted and that the match result was, therefore, never in doubt. -- Geoff Naldrett

Daniel Lindner