On Wednesday night our C team travelled to play against Bristol Four Knights A team. Jane’s son Ollie, a former England Junior Team player, stepped in at the last minute on top board. He was up against a really in-form and so far undefeated opponent, Will Austin. What followed was a really high class game featuring the tricky Budapest Gambit - with which Will was clearly familiar. None-the-less, Ollie played solidly and sensibly while Will found the strongest and most forcing moves. Without any obvious errors having been made it became clear that Will had a very strong initiative and kingside attack. It looked completely lost to me but somehow Ollie hung on with accurate play for another 10 moves. Eventually, however, the pressure told and Will took advantage of an inevitable error and won a very fine game. Ollie was unlucky to find an opponent in such fine form!
Brad’s game was a whole lot more chaotic. After the moves 1.e4 e5 2. Nc3 Nf6 3. f4 exf4? 4.e5 Ng8 I thought it was all over and that’s why Brad had lost - simply not knowing about the Vienna Gambit!. Without much hope I decided to see what happened next. Thankfully his opponent decided to play in the manner of Paul Morphy (fast develpoment regardless of material) and allowed Brad back into the game. From there Brad completely outplayed his opponent with some really fine play. What happened then has, or will, happen to all of us. A loose move when you are a piece and a rook up shouldn’t matter, but it did - and 0-1 turned to 1-0. Really unfortunate!
Frank’s game had a quiet start in contrast. It was a kind of Colle System in which Frank held a slight advantage due to his two bishops and slight space advantage. He could have exchanged queens and gone into a very safe ending with a slight advantage but probably drawn. Instead he moved his queen to defend his bishop on g5 (remember, loose pieces often drop off) and all should be fine. However, Nh5 attacked his queen and unveiled another attack on the g5 bishop (undefended and underdefended pieces also drop off!) . The bishop dropped and soon the game. Another example of one move loses the game.
So to be fair, at this point I think Four Knights deserved to be 2-1 up. Unfortunately I haven’t seen the final game so have no idea how close the match was in the end. It was, full credit to a very excellent Bristol Four Knights Team, 4-0 to them.
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