So last Thursday, the 24th January, saw Cumnor 1’s first match of 2022, away in the Deep South at Didcot.
Following our great first half of the season a win or a draw would see us go second, over taking Banbury, and as such we got out about our strongest side. Unfortunately, at least for us, Didcot also had pulled out all the stops and the match card looked very closely balanced:
Don’t be deceived by Joe Conlon’s rating – he is a very strong titled player coming back to “proper” chess after a bit of a break.
Well, what to say … After riding our luck a bit through the first half of the season the chickens came home to roost, so I’ll keep this short but the most important thing is we were outplayed – Didcot were definitely the better team on the night. I’ll gloss over Mark and Eldar who both had games they probably want to forget, and while Liam had more chances it probably won’t feature amongst his top 10 either. Even Nigel, one of our three draws, I know was not happy with his play. So that leaves me, and especially Stuart.
My game was fun if not wonderfully correct:
I got move-ordered in the opening going into a setup Peter obviously knew much better than I, and my 10. O-O was just very short-sighted, I knew the form his attack would take and I castled straight into it. Having no sensible counter-play I managed to make some complications with 20 Nfd5 which I muddled through into a better endgame, which I then misplayed. Thankfully for me Peter missed a horrible blunder by me near the end (in time trouble) and it ended as a draw – probably overall a fair result, though I came away feeling a little lucky.
Stuart’s game was also not a thing of subtle strategy, here it is, along with some annotation that Stuart sent around:
I first wandered over at about move 15, and was amazed to see Black’s King so open – “this looks fun” was very much my thought. I don’t play 1.d4? nor the Kings Indian (except by transposition), so I don’t know if this is mainline theory but it does look like a good try by white! Stuart did everything but win it – he just needed to get the knight out and get on with the attack rather than worry about niceties such as the e4 pawn – something it is much easier to say when firstly it is not your game, and secondly somebody has kindly provided some analysis! Anyway Joe survived Stuart throwing the kitchen sink at him, and an honourable draw was the result – and a good game to look over.
So 4.5-1.5 was the final result
Oh well. Well played Didcot again, and I really shouldn’t feel upset that we are “only” third in the table!
