Poole A v Wimborne A

Another close encounter between the 2 teams.
Despite telling me he had been"thrown to the wolves" on board 2 Bill had a good game against Mike and after a few pieces came off a draw was agreed.
Eddie and John battled again for second week running and again a draw was the outcome.
Board 1 and 4 both had grand prix attack openings with white gaining the advantage. David had Nick tied down on board 1 and eventually David broke through for the win after 3 hours.
David Fuller had played the old trick of an early f5 and Ian missed the power of the approaching knights and could not avoid losing the exchange for a pawn. Despite a very long ( 70 moves ) rearguard action eventually David found a winning combination and we retired to the bar to contemplate the evenings chess being thrown out at 11.30 !

We needed a big push to break free from the large pack of teams hovering around 6 points in the DCL League 1 last night. Groundhog Day again... Wimborne again...

As you all know, that Ian Clark chap is a tricky blighter. In fact, it reminds me of the time recently at our club when preparing for another Wimborne match. I asked a colleague if he knew Ian.
'Two things you should know about that tricky blighter', he said, 'first, he is a blighter!'. 'Oh yes', I said, eyes rolling slightly.
'Second...',
'He is tricky?', I interrupted.
'OOH, you know of that tricky blighter!'.
'No, just a wild stab in the dark, which is what you will get if you don't shut up and start getting the chess clocks out!'.

Anyway, Ian Clark always moves his players around on his team sheet for each match and smiles at you as though he has just split the atom or invented Tiramisu. To be fair though, it always seems to work against us, like last week!

Let's talk about some chess.

B2: Mike Duggan (w) vs Bill Adaway always looked pretty equal, although Mike did get the thematic d5 push in. A draw was the result and Ian's ruse of pushing Bill up a couple of boards had done the job. Ian grinned.

B3: John Weatherlake (b) vs Eddie Barker, a rerun of last week, seemed to start poorly for John, surprised by Eddie's Trompowsky (had to check the spelling there) and took quite some time to get a playable position. A blocked middle game saw opposite castling and chances for both sides, but both sides were solid and a friendly draw also resulted.

B1: Nick Lee (b) vs Dave Onley looked a sharp affair with an early White f5 and a complex looking position. I didn't see much of the game, but Nick did say that he felt better near the end, but unfortunately missing a layered tactic allowing Dave to take the full point.

B4: David Fuller (w) vs Tricky Customer started off quietly enough with a Grand Prix Attack 5.Bb5 but went crazy when a speculative f5 push was able to become a pawn sac on f6 with White Knights flying everywhere. The resulting position saw those knights on d6 and f7 with Black's King on f8. Ian was his usual self and kept creating problems. The game simplified (thank goodness) when increments approached and I was able to convert a less than trivial R+B+4p vs 2B+4p with both of us in the last couple of minutes. Well, we had to go to the bar! An exciting game with interesting lines everywhere, and tenacious defence by Ian.

I dropped JohnW home and he insisted that I have a beer at his place while we went through our games. We finally felt we had got to the bottom of it by about 02.00 and I have annotated the game with this detail on the Poole Website. http://poolechessclub.org.uk/game/2023-03-20-fuller-vs-clark/

Result: Poole A 2 - Wimborne A 2

Thanks Guys. Always nice to see you, although let's leave it at least a couple of weeks before the next match eh?

DF