On Friday night we played our sixth round at the Twin Cities Chess League. The matchups for each board were as follows:
Kelly v Gary N
Gary K v Me
John v Henry K
Ron J v Blaine
Gary K is the captain of The Knights of Kroll. So, we had captain v captain on board two. It was a brutal and quick game which left me checkmated on the 23rd move.
Blaine was the next victim, who was a piece behind relatively early. He played on valiantly, but Ron was victorious in that game.
Now Kelly and John had two very interesting games. Kelly was playing the White side of a Sicilian, and I cannot remember the opening that John had against Henry. However, I had hope because of how well our two remaining players were executing their plans that we might get two wins to draw out the match.
John's game finished ahead of Kelly's. He had a good attack against Henry's king. Most of his pieces were aiming in that direction, while Henry kept up a good counterattack. Henry played a move that would have forced John to back up the Rook that was now under attack, or...
He could sac that Rook for two pawns(!!!), which he did! I was thinking that move had lots of potential, and John took advantage of all the open lines of force once he did away with those two Pawns. The mobility of John's remaining pieces more than compensated for the loss of material. John got in a number of good forks which left Henry with little choice but to eventually resign the game.
So, it was now up to Kelly. He had a great attack against Gary's Kingside. He exchanged a Rook for a defending Bishop which allowed mobility for his advanced Knight. As they trudged through the middlegame, they ended up playing to a draw in a complicated endgame with less than a minute remaining for each of them.
So, we lost the match 1.5-2.5, leaving us with a score of 2.5 for the season with one match remaining next month. See the Minnesota Chess website for a preview of next month's deciding battles.
Tags: Twin Cities Chess League, chess
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