Downend's results in this division haven't been great, but they are a big club with lots of depth, so we could expect to have to work for the win. In October, they came to us with only 4 players and still managed to get the better of a 3-3 draw. Worse still, I lost on that occasion, and of course was hoping for revenge - unfortunately, I may have to wait a while for my grading points to be returned, for my earlier opponent has since moved to Birmingham. In any case, Downend were not as strong as they might have been (they had other matches going on simultaneously) and so we had a comfortable grading advantage: 162-128, 156-U, 162-109, 110-90, 110-87, 74-56. In contrast to the Horfield match, where an even stronger team still had to work hard to get a flattering 4.5-1.5 win, this time we looked a little silly for bringing such a strong group of players.
My opponent was the 128-graded Colin Giles, who lost on board 2 in the corresponding fixture back in October - then as now, he had black, so I knew to expect the ...e6 Sicilian that duly appeared. Despite getting into a line known to favour white, I misplayed the opening and had to rely on that fortunate habit of lower-graded players - self-immolation - in order to collect a miniature win:
I don't conciously set out to make chess look like an easy game - but my opponents insist! As in the last post, I did rather little beyond waiting for him to blunder away a completely tenable position, and then play accurately to punish him tactically when the opportunity arose. In both games, I got into an opening line that should be much better for white but didn't get much out of it thanks to inaccuracies - this isn't something that goes unpunished when facing opponents of my own strength. I didn't really understand the ideas behind the crucial 8. c4, which would have led me to the natural follow-up. Black's centre left me in a rather passive state, but I was allowed to untangle and by the time my Knight got to g5 I had re-established a good advantage. However the incomprehensible 20... e4?? led to a very abrupt end to a game that I was expecting to be a slow and painful grind; curiously the move did leap out at me as well, and it's almost as though I hypnotised him into playing it! In any case, it gains nothing and allows white's more harmoniously-placed pieces to kill the game in only a few more moves.
The strength of our team appeared even more excessive when we wracked up a clean WWWWWW, our first 6-0 of the season (apart from a forfeit by Bath University) quickly establishing an advantage everywhere. The match started late, at about 8pm, but we'd already left the venue by 9:30 and I was home by 10. Hence this has gone up promptly - I blog while you sleep! Nonetheless, second place is ours (although I am doubtful that we are strong enough to justify being promoted) so a job well done. We finished with P18 W11 D2 L5 GP66.5/108 MP24/36. Not bad at all for a team usually composed of social players from board 3 downwards. My own score for the team this year - +9 =2 -1, winning all 6 games I played after mid-November - shows clearly that my main strength to a team is as a 'bunny basher,' for I have been remarkably consistent in polishing off opponents graded lower than me. Such an overwhelming score only equates to a performance of 167.
My next game is today, but I don't know what event it is in! Our Varsity match against the University of the West of England (or, as it's universally known, UWE) is scheduled for this afternoon, but we're not really convinced that they're going to turn up. If they do, I'm on board 1; if not then the next post will be the match in the evening against the feared Clifton A-team.
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