Round 5 - NW Eagles v Levy Gee 3Cs (Sat 27 Jan, 2001)

Report by Charlie Kennaugh

Round 5 Games

A fairly comfortable victory in the end keeping us on course for promotion at the end of the season after the slight hiccup on the previous 4NCL weekend. Board 5 was an early draw with Alan Walton (as white against Dave Tebb) apparently intentionally (and rather surprisingly) repeating the same line in the Tromp that Steve Dishman had played last season against Dave when he got less than zero from the opening. Walton only 'improved' in as much as he achieved a rather dull equality. This is clearly a very good theoretical line against the Tromp, but not if black's playing for a win. Ben Hague looked (at least to my unknowing eyes) as if he might be under a little pressure, but his lower rated opponent tried to force things and, possibly achieving less than expected, seemed to lack the confidence to play on.

Glen Charleshouse clearly had the hardest task playing black on board 1 against Nigel Davies. The opening and early middlegame was not entirely clear (at least to me) and Glen may well have had chances at various stages, but unfortunately his king always seemed to be less safe than his opponent's and eventually Davies's attack came crashing through. Things weren't looking too good for us when Gary, on board 2, seemed to get into considerable trouble on the white side of the French (which he plays himself as black). Fortunately his opponent Stuart Clarke (an erstwhile Eagle himself) did not seize his opportunity, but Gary did and eventually outplayed Clarke to claim a very welcome full point for us. John Merriman had a good victory on board 6 powerfully despatching his opponent (Robert Taylor) who seemed to have badly mishandled the black side of the Nimzo Indian. Claire very early on obtained a winning position, being a pawn up with an apparently crushing position. It has to be to the credit of her young, very lowly rated opponent (Katie Martin), that she managed to hang on and indeed reach an endgame, though Claire, still being a pawn up, duly chalked up the full point.

I was feeling in 'creative mode' so wheeled out 2.b3 against the Sicilian, which I do from time to time when I want to do confuse my oppponent, in this case, John Bentley. The move is not quite as innocuous as it looks and can often lead to interesting positions. This certainly happened in this game both in terms of an interesting position and a confused opponent, who soon got into trouble and I was able to take advantage tactically. John Littlewood was last to finish on board 3. He seemed to get an acceptable position on the black side of the Philidor (a favourite of John's), but he overlooked a clever strategem of his opponent (Alexander Longson) who managed to win a pawn and force the exchange of the queens. The endgame must have been objectively winning for white, but John put up a spirited fight managing to retain enough piece activity to make white's task far from simple. At the end, white could probably have still played on for a win, but with the overall match result already settled and maybe dispirited by a lack of progress or tired and worried that he could yet blunder the game away, Longson offered John a draw which was gratefully accepted. So a final result of 5½-2½, which was eminently satisfactory for us even if it didn't entirely reflect the course of the match, which had looked a lot closer at one stage.