Grantham-2 vs Nottingham Central 4:1

Wednesday night, October 24, Grantham Chess Club was the home team in the match with Nottingham Central. Former "Navigation" came to Grantham with their strong line-up. 

Despite the fact that Grantham-2 lost the game on the top board the rest of team did not get the opponents a single chance.

Grantham-2		4:1	Nottingham Central-1
David I	167	0:1	Harrison J	169
Hebert A	-	1:0	Foster S	158
Holt C	148	1:0	Cairney K	95
Palmer T	149	1:0	Patel P	-
Mason B	145	1:0	Kacprzak L	114

Game on the top board is a nice exhibition what can happen if you go into the opponent's favourite position. John Harrison is an experienced player and I have to sadly confess that after ten moves I was strategically completely lost. His plan 9.c5 is interesting and good one. Sadly enough, he played this plan in some game in 2006. If I had known ...

Andy Hebert played again with White pieces and again quite aggressively. An Alapin variation of Sicilian - B22 - was played and Black fianchettoed his dark-squared Bishop.
The only question is whether Andy's move 9.Bxf7 is the best what he could have played, or, the less appealing line 9.Nxe4 d5 had not been better. No matter how good or bad his position was, his opponent  Stephen Foster, simply slipped two moves later... Since that time on Andy did not give him a second chance.




Chris Holt, playing against Ken Cairney, won easily because, as he commented his game himself, "the opponent basically committed a suicide..."

Trevor Palmer, having the luxury of White, he was within a move of delivering his beloved Stonewall Attack, but his opponent stopped that by castling queen-side - as the position suggested he must. Trevor then switched to making queen-side threats but stopped when he saw his opponent had tied himself up. However, his renewed attack down the king-side was limited by it all having to be delivered down the f-file but with half of black's pieces out of the game, it really had to be a win!




Ben Mason won as well and sealed the team victory 4:1.