THE match at Ringwood

The boards were set, the clocks were ready to tick, and Poole…were trying to find the venue.

But soon enough the games were underway, before their captain managed to get there. Harry, Dragos, Sev and Harshal playing Ringwood in the Bacchus League.

Harry had a game which was tight throughout with very little opportunities. Harry kept his concentration through the longest game of the night and they finished as they started with honours even and a Harry that still has to get up for school tomorrow.

Dragos dropped a couple of pawns in the opening before his opponent got into an advanced position and started calculating with hands waving over the board “….takes that….goes there…” It seemed to mostly work out, and he proceeded to sac the exchange, push the king around before the queen/knight combination won Dragos’s queen. However Dragos found an excellent reply pinning the queen to a back rank mate. The convoluted sequence ended up with an even trade of queen, rook, knight. However, Dragos was down 2 pawns before it all started and that’s hard to come back from.

I came in to find Sev in an enthralling battle with an exchange up but an under siege king before he found time to deliver a check and a queen sac for a back rank mate. Unfortunately I was then informed that was the second game and the first had a rather quick fatal blunder ending the game quickly and for the worse.

Harshal was making his debut for the club and held a complicated position. He seemed to have the edge before falling the the adage that the winner is the person who makes the second to last mistake. Unfortunately Harshal made the final mistake. But an excellent showing for his first game of many for Poole.

A valiant effort from all, but a final score of 3.5-0.5 in Ringwood’s favour, but the spirit of the Bacchus was adhered to with players getting good games in an excellent environment.

Thank you Mike for hosting and the tea, a pleasure as always. Well done to the players on both sides for some excellent battles.

That was the only game on in Ringwood wasn’t it???

Tarik
April 24, 2023