Wednesday 27th April

It all came down to the last match of the season. We had lost one match and drawn two, University had lost one match - against us - and drawn one. We had to win the match to win the division. It often takes some time for the position to clarify in matches but tonight it was pretty clear early on what was happening on three of the boards. On Board 2 Mursal's opponent sacced the exchange forcing him to recapture and leave his queen behind enemy lines on a1. With no quick way back and his uncastled King exposed in the centre it was a rout. 0-1. A nice game by Mursal's opponent. Board 5 Peter overlooked a one move combination and lost a pawn. But as any good C Team player knows pawns just get in the way of your pieces, and when Peter started to concentrate, with a bit of help from his opponent, he used the extra space to attack all over the board. 1-1. Board 6 Ian won a couple of pawns and exchanged everything in sight in an attempt to grind his opponent into submission. This worked a treat as after the match his opponent said, 'I couldn't be bothered,' 'I wasn't trying to win,' and 'I was bored.' Somewhere in Moscow a smile flickered across Anatoly Karpov's face. We were 2-1 up but the other three boards were unclear. On Board 3 was Kev's attack going to work? Kev set a number of problems for his opponent, the pressure eventually told and Kev won. You can see the game here. 3-1. We needed a ½ point from the last two games. On Board 4 Azmiddin's opponent seemed to have borrowed pieces from an extra set and with everything pointed at Azmiddin's king he was clearly lost. We needed Special Guest Star Mithun to get us half a point on Board 1. Unqualified to speak on Board 1 matters I turned to Paul C for his assessment. 'Don't know.' and 'Unclear' were not much help. With Mithun down to a couple of minutes and his opponent down to five it looked increasingly like Black's attack was going to break through and when he allowed a pawn to fork Rook and Queen he resigned. Then Paul tapped me on the shoulder and showed me what was happening on Board 4. Most of the pieces had disappeared and Azmiddin had skewered White's Queen to his King. Suddenly we were back in it. This is what happened next.

Paul B