It was a night of mixed set of results for Wessex yesterday with 3 match wins, 1 draw and 4 losses. That said, there was some really entertaining chess played.
The A team won again. Roland Bezuidenhout (who has recently beaten not just one but two GMs in tournament games) was first to finish, going down on the white side of an insanely complicated Winawer. The other three boards all won. Jamie Wilson found his way through an endgame where both sides had two connected passers better than his opponent and finished it off with a nice mating net. Mark Cleary played a nice exchange sac to leave himself with three connected passers in the middlegame and never looked back; the critical point of that game is given at the end of this report. Rolandas Lukosius’s opponent sacced a piece for two pawns but perhaps did not follow up correctly as within a few more moves Rolandas established a blockade and clearly stood much better and went on to smoothly convert.
The B team was again outrated and lost 1-3. Spare a thought for Bill McDougall who was playing Black against an IM. He entered an endgame with R+B+3 vs R+N+3 which seemed in practice to give White a small but long term pull and of course IMs are very good at using these to apply niggling pressure. Eventually Bill reached the dreaded R+B vs R ending and was still technically fine when he hung his rook.
The C team played a match full of interesting games including a nice win by Bill Adaway and a very hard fought draw by Rajasekhar Pentakota who was last to finish on the night. John Weatherlake’s game was equally gripping, with both sides having clearly winning positions at some point, only for John to go wrong trying to squeeze a win out of a drawn position – haven’t we all done that?
The D team continued its winning ways. Reenen du Toit demonstrated the superiority of a queen vs rook and knight, James Chilton benefitted from his opponent donating his queen, and Richard Ursell demonstrated the superiority of turning up rather than defaulting!
The E team was heavily outrated so their 2-2 draw was an excellent result. Congratutions to Tim Jones and Phil Pinto for their wins against stronger opponents. Phil’s game was very convincing as he got an advantage in the early middlegame and never lost his grip.
The F team looked favourite on paper and indeed pulled through 3-1 with victories from Jamie Doyle, Edward Blanden and Graham Hillman.
The G team had the misfortune to play a team that would not look out of place in Division 2 or even Division 1. Despite fighting hard, they went down 0-4.
The H team were also heavily outrated on three of the four boards but managed to salvage half a game point thanks to Florence Spirling’s well fought draw.
Peter Anderson
22/9/21
