Ringwood v Poole

A pleasure as always to play Poole. The result was satisfying but myself and John Weatherlake has collaborated a lot before the game and on paper Ringwood looked to be favourites this time. Having said that many of the games were tough affairs.

My focus was on checking the pubs products while the proper chess players did their thing. The products at the Fish Inn were excellent but I did eventually decide to watch some chess.

Board one was a excellent struggle. Initially Martin looked to be better, but Peter played well to complicate and looked to be better later in the game. Martin eventually was forced to play what looked like a potential mating attack with Nf6+ but in the post match analysis neither player suggested an actual winning line. In the end Peter forced a draw by a perpetual, which was a fair result for this spectator. I was very impressed that Martin reminded Peter he didn't have to record the moves in the last 5 minutes as we played without an increment! A very Impressive sporting gesture IMO.

I spent a bit of time staring at Julian's game against Harshal. Julian made it as tactically difficult as possible but Harshal played really well in my opinion to keep the position under control and consolidate his advantage.

Poole board 8 was Dan Page from Ringwood to ensure everyone got a game. Not sure what the best way to deal with that is, so will simply ignore the problem :-)

I've allocated local grades of 1400 to both Paolo Mancini and Neo Jakobi.