Leeds Rose Forgrove Chess Club

The top board clash was an interesting affair. Keith had sacrificed (or lost) a pawn but was some way ahead in development with many of Clive’s pieces still on the back rank. However, Clive appeared to be wriggling his way free of Keith’s grip and was beginning to fight for the initiative. Unfortunately, with the lack of competitive chess for players in recent weeks the inevitable time-trouble reared its ugly head. Clive made a serious blunder when taking a pawn and Keith ended up a whole queen up. He had no trouble in converting this material advantage beginning his championship with a key win.

 

On board two Andy Bagley was swimming in acres of space as white as he typically produced a strong pawn frontage cramping John’s position. A calculation blunder from John meant that some pawn exchanges ended with him losing a piece. With a strong positional advantage and now a material one, Andy confidently squeezed the life out of John’s position and collected the point.

 

On board three Neil was in serious trouble right out of the opening as Warren’s queen and bishop combined to provide nasty threats to Neil’s king. Unable to coordinate his defence or even develop his pieces reasonably, Neil’s position fell apart as Warren coolly pressed home the attack.

 

 

On board four I was facing new boy Alex King. The game went into a standard king’s pawn opening with Alex fairly rifling through his first 7 or 8 moves. I was somewhat perturbed by the speed and seeming confidence that Alex was thrashing out his moves. However, perhaps being over-confident, Alex exposed his castled kingside position with some pawn thrusts. With his pieces directed towards the queenside I was able to crash in to his king position and deliver mate in fairly quickly. Better luck next time, Alex!

 

On board five the two Andy's got into what looked a fairly level endgame with Ross having the knight against Parker's bishop. Although Ross was a pawn up it looked like Parker could snaffle this off easily enough. However, for some reason this never happened and Ross gradually showed his dominance in the endgame as his king became much more active than Parker's and effectively decided the game.

 

 

So, five decisive games in the opening round with the shock of the round being Clive’s loss to Keith. Our club officer will have to start producing the goods in the next few rounds if he is to claim back the title from reigning champion Andy Bagley.

 

The leaderboard after the first round was as follows:

NAME	GRADE	TOTAL
Andy Bagley	165	1
Warren Dennison	157	1
David Hirst	149	1
Andy Ross	144	1
Keith Riach	135	1
Dominic Gallagher	93	1/2
Clive Davies	168	0
John Wells	113	0
Neil Bolton	91	0
Alex King	80	0
Andrew Parker	74	0

 

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