DCL1: PooleA vs Yeovil

Well this time we were the Away Team at Dorchester playing Yeovil who were the home team. Dorchester were also playing in another match in which I am fairly certain they were the home team. Thank goodness for LMS.

The Poole team had been carefully selected with Chip coming in to give MikeD a rest, but at 18.15, just before the match, we were rocked by the news that John ‘Bulletproof’ Weatherlake had gone and taken a covid test after feeling a bit dodgy. Well John felt awful. I mean that he felt awful about feeling awful because he was positive that he was positive. Clear? Good. Bottom line is that we turned up as a three man team. Luckily I had been in time to warn Adam to avoid a fourth player shlepping in from Yeovil.

B2: Chip (b) vs Raimund. Well this was a strange and interesting game. White took some space in the centre while Chip did a Chip and took his time expanding on the queenside. Before long Black had a clamp with pawns on c4/b3 preventing smooth White development and it didnt seem to matter that Black was hardly developed. The White pawn on a4 was ripe for plucking and so Raimund decided to sac a piece for two pawns and a bit of initiative. Unfortunately for White, the king was stuck in the centre and the initiative wained. Chip took the full point.

B3: David (w) vs Darren. Started off with an Alekhine 3.Nc3 creating an unbalanced position with opposite side castling. White h4, h5 quickly appeared while Black opened the d-file. I felt that I had an advantage (the computer agreed) but I was not able to prrss the advantage. There were a few tricks in the position when it came back to roughly equal, but I looked across at Nick’s game on B1, which seemed winning to me, and offered a draw, which was accepted. My excuse it that I had 1min left to my opponents 4min and it was dead drawn.

B1: Nick (w) vs Adam. This game was very complicated. I didn’t get the full gist, but it seemed that Adam had an opportunity for a big plus but, in his words, hallucinated thinking that White’s queens was dropping to a tactic. Nick found himself an exchange up, RN+2p vs BN+2p, but with opposition passed g/h pawns supported by the King marching southwards. Tense stuff with the match all square at this point. Luckily for Poole, Nick had everything under control and an exchange of the minor pieces could be forced with a distant a-pawn queening.

Result: PooleA 2.5 – 1.5 Yeovil

The obligatory team pint in the bar afterwards included Adam and we chatted about the match and Yeovil’s experiences in this first season in the DCL.

Regarding the match, I think that Poole deserved the win on balance.

Regarding Yeovil, this league is richer for their participation IMHO and it is a minor inconvenience to have to play in Dorchester.

Looking forward to catching up again next year.

DF

David Fuller
May 11, 2023