Poole B v Purbeck B

A heavily lopsided team appeared for the home side with 175 taking the majority of the available grading points. It's a team where you expect top board to win and then salvage the points on other boards to make up the win.

John had about 30 grading points on his opponent and was showing his class in what looked a very tenuous position but everything was being held up just enough. An early central Pawn was won, but there was more positional compensation than expected. A beautiful position resulted with his Bishop being threatened and instead of protecting it, pushed a Pawn. If the Queen takes the Bishop then it's victim of a King-Queen fork from the Knight. If the Knight is chased away first, then the newly pushed Pawn can push further causing real trouble. John sealed a win without too much fuss to get us off to a winning start. The plan is working.

Next Chris was playing a tough game against Derek, He lost his 'a' Pawn fairly early on from a marauding Queen and was playing catchup from then on. Soon it was over and the game was level at 1-1.

Graham quickly managed to get into an interesting position throwing a Pawn down his opponents throat. This Pawn on the 6th rank was quite an outpost, whilst the game had attack on both sides, with some nice threats against him pinning the 'g' Pawn against the castled King and a Bishop threatening all sorts of nastiness. Eventually however Graeme managed to get a Rook to the back rank and with the help of the Pawn outpost, the King had nowhere to go.

Finally I was playing Nick. An early Pawn advance left a fork for Poole to take advantage of to pick up the loose Pawn. This put the dampeners on the attack and although there were some tricky positions and nasty threats and baited Bishops, the position was gradually improved until there was enough of a Pawn chain with few enough defenders to close the case.

3-1 to Poole, well done team and onwards and upwards.

Well done Tarik. Your plan worked! Congratulations on a fine win. However we still enjoyed the match. As usual it is a pleasure to visit you. You always make us feel welcome. Derek