Commercial V Insurance

Match report Commercial

It was a remarkably close match with five of the seven decisive games being decided in quickplay finishes. Anthony [Kent]’s was the last game to finish, a tense struggle in which he made gains on the queen side and successfully resisted Steven Macdonald-Ross’ counterplay in the centre. I don’t think Anthony saw in the latter stages too much of the other games, so I shall let you have my impressions. The early results were draws on Boards 8 and 9, a win for Peter Ackley on Board 2 (Ian walked into a pre-analysed sacrificial line in the opening) and a win for Mike Wiltshire to level the score. His opponent, David Gilbert, managed as White to establish a Knight on d6, but could do nothing with it, nor make progress on the queenside. Mike Wiltshire had more than equalised by advancing his f-pawn to f4 when David in his own words made a fatal blunder. The next game to finish was on Board 1. Ken Norman managed to isolate Julian Farrand’s QP and exchanged pieces to reach a R, N and P ending. Julian had a better knight and a space advantage. Neither player could make headway and the game was drawn. 2½-2½! Two crucial draws followed. On Board 11 William Diffey had repulsed a dangerous but possibly premature attack by Mike Broad and had built up his own pressure down the e- and f-files. Did he miss an opportunity to win somewhere along the line? I’m not sure. At the end Mike had regained a slight though far from decisive initiative, but was a little behind on the clock. So a draw was a fair result. On Board 3, Ian Calvert had been pressing most of the game, first in a middle game in which he exposed John Bass’ king, and then in an endgame in which he had a dangerous looking passed pawn and pressure on John’s weak kingside squares. John’s valiant defence led to a R and P ending which he certainly wasn’t losing when a draw was agreed. LCCL [London Commercial Chess League] regained the lead when Andy Waters converted his extra pawn into a winning endgame on Board 7. Four games left. I couldn’t see the LCCL winning on Board 4, where at one stage Paul Barasi had 8 minutes on his clock to David Sedgwick’s 45 in a quite complex middle game. Despite heroic efforts on Paul’s part, reaching a clearly drawn R and P ending, and reducing his time deficit to eight minutes, his flag finally fell. I also feared for Steven Macdonald-Ross, correctly as it turned out. So we had to win on Boards 5 and 6, and win we did. Nigel Fleming converted a slight endgame edge in the form of a space advantage into a winning good N v bad B ending. But from my view, the game of the night was Tony Harvey’s. He sacrificed two exchanges and won a couple of vital central pawns to create an irresistible phalanx. Once Tony had regained one exchange, the result seemed inevitable – provided his K position did not allow a perpetual check. And it didn’t. So when Martin Page resigned LCCL had reached the winning total of 6½ points. One curiosity. No Insurance CC player won with the White pieces. All three of its wins were with Black. -- Mike Wickham

Daniel Lindner