Dorset League: Poole 2.5 – 1.5 Ringwood

Another smooth ‘Arsenal win’ or was it ‘Squeeky Bum Time’? Let’s decide together dear reader.

The Dorset League Fixtures have started slow this year and this was only the second match of the season in Division One. Team Boss Chip had the luxury of choosing the best (?) from the BDCL A and B Teams resulting in the Dream/Nightmare (delete as appropriate) Team of: MartinM, Chip, your youthful correspondent and John ‘Steamroller’ Weatherlake. Ringwood had a strong line-up with Martin Symonds, Martin Clancy, Tim Weir and Rob Perrin.

The clocks were started and immediately B1 saw a flurry of activity (not) with MartinM, with White, going all Dragi and starting with 1. Walk-Around-for-a-bit. I spoke to him afterwards and he talked about wanting to see how the other games were starting off so he could gauge his actions. I was most amused when after ten minutes Martin walked over and casually played 1. e3 while standing up. MartinS was having none of this nonsense and replied d6 with a wry grin… Ooh, combinative stuff!

On B2 Chip was showing off his GingerGM back catalogue knowledge against an agressive (only on the board) Martin Clancy. I didn’t have a clue what was going on so I left them to it.

On B3, I was White playing Tim Weir, who I had not met before, a really nice chap, but all is fair in Love and Chess… Closed Sicilian, blah blah, and I should have transposed to an Open with an early d4 for the advantage, but I didn’t and a gummed-up position (not ideal for my two bishops) with only the open e-file resulted. I was pretty pleased with my delicate maneuvering (??) which lead to a virtual zugzwang in the middle game. When a second weakness around the Black king was created and with the tactics working (for once) a nice combination brought in the full point.

B4 saw John as Black against Rob Perrin and a strange position was soon reached with Kings and Rooks unmoved and one minor piece each midboard. From the odd glance, it seemed that Black was struggling slightly to me, but I underestimated John’s piece activity and he was about to convey to an endgame with R+3p vs R+3p on one side and one extra pawn on the seventh with rook in front on the other side… not a trivial win with ten minutes each left. But John saw a clever pawn break which resulted in the classic mechanism with queen the pawn or skewer the king to the rook.

Earlier MartinM had been offered a draw when Bs3/4 had been looking very even (and Chip’s was looking dodgy) and he had rejected it with a reasonable position playing for the win that we seemed to need. Unfortunately, MartinS found some resources as MartinM pressed, perhaps too much, and the point went to Ringwood. Well played MartinS.

So 2-1 to Poole and what on earth is happening on B2. Chip has weathered the storm of MartinC’s onslaught, or has he? Martin has Two Rook for Chip’s Queen and a massive attack. Chip has 60 seconds left and with only half of that time himself Martin took a perpetual for the draw. Of course, immediately afterwards, many winning ideas for White were put forward by us experts, but trying implementing those with 28 seconds left. A great game. Well done both players.

So, I think Squeeky Bum Time… well, John and I tried to keep things boring.

I then asked Martin if he would like a drink and two thirds of the people there said Yes Please!…

David Fuller
December 19, 2017