9 March 2022
Another week, another round of fixtures in the Leeds Chess Association Division 1 (for our “A” team) and Division 2 (for our “B” team). Yours truly didn’t feature this week, due to having to look after Junior Macadams – he’s 4 and I plan to live my Grandmaster dreams vicariously through him once he learns that a knight can’t just jump around the board and “gobble” up all my pieces.
But how did the Limewooders and Scarcrofters get on? As often, it was a mixed bag.
Division1
Let’s start with the “A” team in Division 1 – playing at home to Alwoodley A, who out-graded us on the top three boards whilst we slightly out-graded them on the bottom two. Alwoodley have the pleasure of Former Zimbabwe international player Ernest Karumazondo on board 1, and as you’d expect he is an excellent player, finding a variation of the French Defence that Paul Belcher hadn’t revised, and taking the point. Despite this, the rest of our cohort of Pauls (Johnson, May and Anderson – who do sound like either a provincial law firm or a cricket bowling attack) all won, so we took the match 3-2 and consolidated the “A” team’s mid-table position – even if we lost the 3 remaining matches we’d still have won the same as we lost.
Division2
Into Division 2 now, and our “B” team made the trip to Alwoodley to play their “B” team, who were sitting 2nd in the table (and indeed, still are). Good wins from our two Johns (Light and Grasham – more architects than cricketers, I reckon) meant that the match was drawn after four games.
Oooh, drama…. The final game at board 1 involved our Richard Sanger against Alwoodley Captain John Hipshon and it went down to the wire. John actually checkmated Richard, but John’s flag had fallen just before he completed the move. However as Richard didn’t have any mating material and couldn’t have won on the board, the game was a draw. Wowzers – that close after 3 hours of chess.
Our “C” team were also at home against Leeds University B, and things didn’t go so well. The students are pushing for promotion, third on the table on goal difference, and they all outgraded the Limewooders – this was translated into the result of 0-5. This means that our “B” team are now ahead of the “C” team by one point in Division 2, but keen readers will remember they have the tougher remaining matches – at least on paper.
Next our “A” team take a trip to Rose Forgrove to play their “B” team, our “B” team also travel to play Leeds “B” and our “C” team keep the seats warm at the Fox and Grapes, entertaining Rose Forgrove’s “D” team.
Keep zugzwanging!
Sterling Macadams