We turned up at the University with a full squad and we were quietly confident of repeating our victory from earlier this season. After a few problems finding the actual room that we were supposed to be playing in, battle commenced at 7.30.
On top board was Oscar playing White against Ian Gallagher. We had predicted a centre counter and possibly the dangerous Portuguese gambit. Oscar sensibly decided to avoid the gambit lines which involve lots of suffering and played an early Bb5+, neutralising most of Black's activity. After that it was pretty standard and Oscar manoeuvred his pieces to good squares whilst enjoying a healthy space advantage. Black's Queen spent a lot of time out of the game on a6 and, once Oscar engineered the c5 pawn break, the writing was on the wall.
On board 2 we had Aron playing with the black pieces against Fergus Skillen. White opened in classical fashion with pawn to King four and Aron responded with his favourite Caro Kann defence. White tried the slightly unusual line 2.c4 but seemed to misplay it and Black had easy development and no problems. After a little bit of shuffling, Aron quickly broke through on the Queenside and forced his opponent to resign, facing two connected passed pawns which by that stage had reached b2 and c2!
On board 3 we had another Caro Kann with Steve on the White side against Francesco Labia. This time the advance variation was played with an early h4. Whilst never in any danger, Steve was unable to break through due to his opponent's solid play and a draw was agreed on move 48.
On board 4 the normally solid as a rock Nigel had a mini disaster as Black against Jonas Zurba, getting his Bishop trapped on b4 after forgetting to exchange it on d2 after his opponent castled in a Bogo Indian. Finding himself a piece down for nothing he was forced to resign and head off for an early bath.
On board 5 we had Mark Morris playing White against ex-Thornbury player Hayden Griffiths. A classical e4 e5 opening quickly led to a wild game, reminiscent of the 19th century. Both sides were winning comfortably at different stages during the game with Mark as low as minus 9 at one point. However unfortunately for Hayden, Mark, like myself is a "Chess Tiger", so being in a completely lost position is no problem and he continued to play bad moves confidently until his opponent ran out of time.
On the lowly bottom board was myself against Finn Slater. Once again, I was playing with the Black pieces as it's not fair on the rest of the team to waste White's advantage with 1.b3. (Hear, hear, Ed.) My opponent played the Morra Gambit against my Sicilian. Normally I decline this dangerous gambit but tonight I decided to try and win "easy and sleazy" by accepting the gambit and trying the Siberian trap. Sadly, it didn't come to pass but I was able to win anyway, despite managing to drop a piece somewhere along the way. Fortunately, I had about five extra Pawns by that stage and when Finn finally resigned, I had managed to mirror Aron by getting my pawns to g2 and f2.
So, overall, another convincing victory by 4½-1½. Next up we face Clifton A on Valentine's Day and are hoping that Mr Cobb has booked a nice restaurant for Mrs Cobb.
Peter Chaplin