Jaguars go down at Metropolitan

Friday 29 November, 2019

Captain Andrew Medworth writes:

We were at a disadvantage from the start as we weren’t able to raise a full team, so defaulted two boards, and were outgraded on all six remaining boards, so the defeat is not surprising. However the games were all hard-fought, and the final scoreline flattered our opponents a little.

I was feeling a bit under the weather, so played very solidly as White against my stronger opponent and managed to draw without too much trouble, in one of the first games to finish.

However games elsewhere were much more dramatic. Gideon Vecht tried to exploit the time trouble of his opponent (who had arrived 20 minutes late), and even thought his opponent’s flag had fallen on move 29, but it turned out he had missed a move on his scoresheet! So unfortunately, his opponent did make the time control, and because Gideon had been playing quickly, he found himself in a lost position on move 31.

There’s an important lesson here: when your opponent is in time trouble, don’t rush things, just focus on finding strong moves that will require your opponent to think! (My past experience with Petr Vachtfeidl suggests he is a chronic time trouble addict, and such people are often quite good at playing quickly, through sheer practice, so if you try to rush, they will often outplay you!)

Both Jonathan and Anthony had very promising positions on boards 1 and 2: Jonathan was two pawns up in a rook ending and Anthony had a very strong attack. However Jonathan wasn’t able to convert his advantage and Anthony missed a cute promotion tactic and even lost. I know both players were very frustrated not to have scored better.

I didn’t see as clearly what happened on boards 5 and 6, but Domenico’s position looked very reasonable at one point, and he told me he blundered something later. So overall I think we were quite unfortunate.

Many thanks to the team for playing, especially those who have played other matches this week! Once we are back to full strength, I’m sure our results will improve.

We only have one more match in 2019, the return internal match against Hendon 2 on 19th December. Alex and I will start organising that soon.

Many thanks!