Cambridge City Chess Club - Fenland Cup

The Semi-Final

Having been given a bye in the quarter-finals of this season's Fenland Cup, we faced a tough nut to crack in the semi-final away against Warboys (who had beaten St. Neots in their quarter-final). Due to some muddling on the part of yours truly the match had to be postponed once, which meant that David Jarvis had to drop out of the rescheduled fixture. However, we still had an impressive team headed by Richard Tozer. We won the toss and opted for White on odds.

We got off to a flying start with Ole winning a piece already in the opening on board 5; on top board Richard deftly exploited Charlie Pickard's somewhat incautious opening play to pick up a pawn and start chiselling out the beginnings of a masterpiece. On board 2, Ola tricked Marcus Misson in a slightly offbeat variation of the Advance Caro-Kann and forced the win of a rook, although the knight looked somewhat difficult to extricate. We only really looked in trouble on board 3 where Paul had run into trouble against Carl Watkins's Scandinavian Defence. On boards 4 and 6 things were fairly level.

The first two games to finish were Rob on board 4 and Ola on board 2. Rob tried very hard to unbalance his game, but never got any real purchase and had to settle for a draw, even being in danger of losing at some point towards the end. On board 2, Marcus threw his kingside pawns forward in a desperate attempt to drum up some counterplay, but when Ola was able to force the queens off White resigned. 1½ - ½ to City. In the meantime, Carl had gifted Paul a piece on board 3, and Paul brought home the full point forcefully. With us having won board 2 and 3 we were now assured of the win on board count in the event of the match ending 3 - 3. On board 6, Patrick therefore duly offered his opponent a draw in a totally blocked endgame where neither side could really expect to make any progress without inviting disaster for himself! Patrick's opponent accepted and with 3 - 1 chalked up, we were assured of a place in the final.

On board 1, Richard's game had entered a time scramble. Richard's queen had penetrated deeply into Black's position and the whole thing looked very promising, when Charlie sacrificed the exchange in order to create counterplay. The game became very double-edged with attacking chances for both sides, compounded by both players being short of time. The game started swinging back and forth, but ended very abruptly when Charlie dropped a piece close the the time control.

So, what about board 5? Well, for a long time Ole had had the upper hand due to his substantial material advantage, but he allowed Black to swap off all the kingside pawns and then the game started slipping from his grasp - and as so often and easily happens in such situations, things quickly went from bad to worse when Beck got his queenside pawns rolling.

The Final

On May 6, we played the final against Peterborough. For this match we probably managed to get out the strongest team in Cambridge's Fenland Cup history, and we outgraded our opponents on every board except top board where Peterborough's Andrei Timosenko were slightly higher graded than Richard. We won the toss this time as well, and chose white on odds.

Once again we got off to a good start. On boards 2 and 3, Hans and Ola both won a pawn in the opening stages of the game. On board 4, Paul slowly outmaneuvred his opponent on the Black side of a Caro-Kann to force the win of an exchange. Richard seemed to get the better of Andrei, and boards 5 and 6 seemed fairly even.

Then the trouble started. On board 3 Ola, having created a protected passed pawn on d6, failed to spot a complete killer blow and then continued to whittle away his massive advantage, to a fairly level rook endgame, and then, not being content with a draw, into a lost one... Hans, still a pawn up, had a very complex endgame on his hands which proved exceedingly difficult to win, and on board 4, Paul was still an exchange up, but his opponent mounted fierce resistance and managed to swap off all the pawns, resulting in a R+N vs R ending. On top board, Andrei had managed to wriggle out of Richard's grasp and Richard was now clearly on the backfoot.

On board 5, Philip had defeated Marcus Connolly, who made a critical mistake allowing Philip force a crucial breakthrough in the centre. As a result Black's king became dangerously exposed and with only one piece being able to come to his defence his position soon collapsed. 1 - 0 to Cambridge. Our lead was cancelled out by Glyn Ward defeating Rob on bottom board. In a quiet line of the Giuoco Piano, White proceeded to keep pawn symmetry. Being the higher graded player, Rob felt obliged to try and create some dynamism in the position, and therefore spurned an easy route to equality (by castling kingside), pushed the G pawn to g5 and castled queenside. This risky strategy took its toll when Black wasted time moving his king to b8, which gave White a vital tempo, allowing him to combine Queen and Knight in a winning attack. Faced with substantial loss of material or mate, Rob resigned. With the match standing at 1 - 1 we were staring defeat in the face, since our likely losses on boards 1 and 3 would mean that Peterborough would win on board count in the event of a 3 - 3 draw.

The end was suitably dramatic. Richard was unable to stave off the inevitable, and Andrei took the full point on board 1, but amazingly Paul got us back to level pegging when he stubbornly kept the pressure on his opponent, who finally cracked and allowed night fork winning the rook and the game. This left the encounters on boards 2 and 3. Hans had sacrificed his two kingside pawns in order to push his passed B pawn forward. At some point, Peter Walker made an illegal move and Hans got 2 extra minutes on the clock and that proved decisive, although Hans thought (he was not quite sure afterwards!) that he actually dropped his passer at one juncture! So, with one game to go City were 3 - 2 up, but the final game was completely lost. Ray had forced Ola to give up a rook for his passed A pawn, leaving an ending where Ray had R+P vs 3P. However, Ola had slightly more time on his clock and in the final minute of the game Ray played a little too slowly. With only seconds left on the clock Ray made a blunder allowing a pawn push to f7 and inevitable promotion. A couple of checks later Ray's flag fell. This most fortunate win brought the final score to 4 - 2 and meant that Cambridge City had regained the Fenland Cup. Now, someone only needs to locate that throphy...

Match reports by Ola Winfridsson.