Bradford (Idle CC..) v Manchester inter-league match
Posted: Fri Oct 22, 2010 11:46 am
Last Sunday Idle CC & Manchester engaged in a `friendly` 20 board match at Bradford, and Im just posting to express my appreciation to all concerned for this enjoyable event. Our hosts put on a good informal buffet before the match...all the usual snacks, etc. Only thing missing was a nice hot cup of coffee/tea to bring me out of my sunday morning blues. It can be hard work at times raising yourself from that sunday morning lay in for these occasions.
However, we arrived on time, having lost our way in the Bradford maze. Alan Smith was navigating, and managed to pick out the correct route, after going round the houses in a couple of loops, trying to spot the key roads.
These occasions are a great opportunity to meet new faces, and engage in some friendly rivalry...as well as to find out whats happening in other chess communities.
The match was fairly close until the later stages, when Idles superior strength on the lower boards started to tell. I liked the format, where we split it up into several grade bands, giving a good spread of players ..from 200+ down to about ECF 70ish on the lower boards.
The games were graded to give a little extra interest, but the result wasnt as important as the fact that we`d had an enjoyable days chess. Our move rate...all moves in 2hrs seemed to work well, having decided that it was too much messing about to programme those `digital clocks` on this occasion. Maybe we should have used the opportunity to have a tutorial, so that players could get more familiar with these `new` beasties. Maybe the players should have been invited to programme there own rates, to gain some experiance at tacking these mysterious objects.
Anyway, a very enjoyable match...thanks to the hosts, and to my opponent for accepting a draw offer fairly early on, after a cut and thrust openning... It started P-Q4 P-Q4, 2 P-qb4 N-qb3 3. pxp Qxp...and I soon found my position under great pressure from my opponents aggressive start...
Fortunately I managed to trade off the most dangerous pieces to reach an even middle game.
However, we arrived on time, having lost our way in the Bradford maze. Alan Smith was navigating, and managed to pick out the correct route, after going round the houses in a couple of loops, trying to spot the key roads.
These occasions are a great opportunity to meet new faces, and engage in some friendly rivalry...as well as to find out whats happening in other chess communities.
The match was fairly close until the later stages, when Idles superior strength on the lower boards started to tell. I liked the format, where we split it up into several grade bands, giving a good spread of players ..from 200+ down to about ECF 70ish on the lower boards.
The games were graded to give a little extra interest, but the result wasnt as important as the fact that we`d had an enjoyable days chess. Our move rate...all moves in 2hrs seemed to work well, having decided that it was too much messing about to programme those `digital clocks` on this occasion. Maybe we should have used the opportunity to have a tutorial, so that players could get more familiar with these `new` beasties. Maybe the players should have been invited to programme there own rates, to gain some experiance at tacking these mysterious objects.
Anyway, a very enjoyable match...thanks to the hosts, and to my opponent for accepting a draw offer fairly early on, after a cut and thrust openning... It started P-Q4 P-Q4, 2 P-qb4 N-qb3 3. pxp Qxp...and I soon found my position under great pressure from my opponents aggressive start...
Fortunately I managed to trade off the most dangerous pieces to reach an even middle game.
