TAFCA LEAGUE ONLINE MATCH REPORT: Div 2 – week 5
TAFCA LEAGUE ONLINE – Match Report
Div 2 – Thurs 6th Aug 20; 7:30pm
St.Andrews Bee Movie ½, Castlehill Cobra`s 3½
Chess can be a strange game at times, or is that the players? Castlehill Cobra`s were firm favourites grading and experience wise compared to St.Andrews Bee Movie who all had estimate grades.
On board 2, it was looking good from the start as the Cobra`s captain, Ed Walton (1229) was blasting his opponent, Drew Knauss (1150)est all over the board at double quick-time. So fast, you would have thought both players were playing a 1 minute bullet game, not 45 minutes+ 15 seconds!
With Ed having a Queen, Bishop & 4 pawns against Drew`s, King & a pawn, it looked all over. But Drew was not for resigning and in the frantic goings on, Ed got careless and, “BANG” – Stalemate!
54.f5 played by Drew as he seen his King had no squares to move to! Ed playing quickly went for getting his pawn promoted with 54…b4 Draw played f e6 and without thinking Ed played fxe6??
Wow what an ending! Drew must have injured himself jumping for joy, while Ed nearly choked on his pint of celebratory beer!
That`s life in the fast lane for you! Ed will learn from this and be a better player for it! Now did I mention the bus incident?…
St.Andrews Bee Movie ½, Castlehill Cobra`s ½
Unfortunately for St.Andrews Bee Movie and TAFCA league online, we had our first major incident as the board 3 match had a no show, a first, which resulted in Colm Hawkins (1350) playing for Cobra`s winning by default. Not good and I know Colm like everybody else wants to play chess and win over the board! Lets hope the player defaulting is okay and was just one of those things?
St.Andrews Bee Movie ½, Castlehill Cobra`s 1½
Board 4 was the next to finish and Cobra`s Innes Ford (1164) never looked in trouble against Riley Kelehan (1000)est, and thankfully for Ed gave the Cobra`s the 2 points for the match! Well played Innes!
St.Andrews Bee Movie ½, Castlehill Cobra`s 2½
The last to finish was a titanic struggle on board 1. Both players gave it their all and to be honest it looked like it was petering out to a draw! Was it an end game mistake by Matthew Heritage (1200)est, or did Peter Sallai (1272)est find all the right moves? You will have to work that one out for yourselves! Peter made sure it was a very good night for the Cobra`s!
St.Andrews Bee Movie ½, Castlehill Cobra`s 3½
A great result for the Cobra`s that amazingly could have been better, but for one slip up, which in the end did not matter! St.Andrews Bee Movie played better than the score suggests. It certainly was not a “B” movie production, but some scenes had to be cut to protect the players well being!
Castlehill Cobra`s played 2, won 2! Can`t ask more than that! Plenty bite and venom in this team!