As our previous post (in March!) noted, league chess has had to go online for the last few months. Since we have just won an online match, it seems a good time to post (rhymes with boast), and do a match report.
As mentioned previously, the club’s competitive online chess is taking place on LICHESS.ORG, where the club takes part in the League of Mayhem. Feel free to contact Tom using his handle “gandto“ . Our most recent match took place on Thursday 12th November 6.45pm start. 60 Minutes +15 seconds per player
llford Kings Chingford Bunnies
- gandto [W] (1908) ½ – ½ Kingdeathv (2013)
- Chessleveller [B] (1923) 1 – 0 dab62 (1833)
- chessbore [W] (1750) ½ – ½ rosey5464 (1810)
- JefPage100 [B] (1630) 1 – 0 hierchon (1368)
A 3-1 win. Gandto (Tom Barton), Chessleveler (Neville Twitchell), Chessbore (Anthony Kent) and JefPage100 (Jef Page).
Although we are a team, one cannot easily follow other games while playing, and the feeling is more alone than over the board, apart from group Zoom before and after playing.
Tom’s game saw him gain some useful advantage against the modern defense, but this petered out to a drawn position. As Black on board 2, Neville played the Nimzowitsch Defense against 1.e4 . The position came down to a level ending before White (heading down the board) played 67. h7?? (instead of 67.Rc2 which draws). This enabled black to push his pawn up followed by his king. Black’s king is nearer the vital b pawns than white’s.
White on board 3, Anthony’s game was also against the Nimzowitsch Defense. White managed to swap down to B v N and an extra pawn up. With very best play, white can probably win (per the computer) with pro-active pawn play on the king side, but black secured a comfortable draw (position after 27….a6).
Board 4, Jef built up a very strong position against his opponent, and he eventually won the hard way (black to move below).
All players’ Lichess games are publicly available on line. Useful for checking out prospective opponent’s openings, which works both ways.
Ilford Chess Club 