"Always make a total effort, even when the odds are against you." - Arnold Palmer

Thursday 10 November 2011

Grantham-2 Beat Nottingham University-2

Grantham-2 was victorious in the league match against University Nottingham-2.
There were two draws for Chris Cumbers and Chris Holt, wins for Ben Mason and Ivan David. Trevor Palmer overplayed his opponent in the opening, alas, finaly he failed to find the best way to the victory and he got himself into a difficult position and finaly lost the game.



Grantham-2
3:2
University-2



David I (164)
1:0
Byrne J ( - )
Palmer T (153)
0:1
Rubinson A (117)
Holt C (145)
½:½
Sirisena A ( - )
Mason B (145)
1:0
Edwards J (125)
Cumbers C (105)
½:½
Kofi O ( - )





On the top board I faced to "unrated" player, James Byrne, who played with White pieces.
In the Slav Defence we went soon out of a theory when my opponent decided to go for a "Catalan-like" set-up. Very soon the game reached a "crunch" point where certain imbalances have already been created. My opponent was much too greedy and went for some "illusory" material advantage winning the exchange.However, in return for this exchange, Black got an active pair of Bishops and two pawns with the nice mobile pawn majority on the queen-side which seemed to me compensation enough for an exchange.
To stop pawn storm on the queen-side, White finally decided to return the exchange which left him pawn down. Arising rook ending was far from being easy to defend, especially when Black had a distant passed pawn.
White definitely had some drawing chances, however, to find a correct defensive plan over the board was rather difficult. I definitely would prefer to be Black in this kind of ending. Make your opinion yourself.




Rook Ending Analysis

Well, interesting game with some inaccuracies in the the rook ending.
The critical ending position for Black was before the move 43...Rb7. There is no doubt that the best plan leading to easy win was 43...Kb4! as has been already shown in the game annotations. 
But what would have happened if my opponent had played 44.Kc3! instead of 44.Kc5?



Well after some analyses it is obvious that 44.Kc3 gave to White the best practical chance for defence.
I think that this ending is very good example of well known fact that activity of pieces is more important than material and in this particular situation was better to sacrifice f7-pawn and push forward the a-pawn.
Anyway, good game, what do you think? 
I will be more than happy if you could put some notes and commentaries on any subject here in this website you like. Thank you very much in advance.

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