Penultimate round punishment in the LOCL
By Hendon LOCL captain Andrew Medworth
Wednesday 3 February, 2021
Both Hendon teams lost in the LOCL this evening. Hendon A were outclassed by a very strong Battersea A team, while Hendon B barely lost a very winnable-looking match against Metropolitan.
| Hendon A | Hendon A | Battersea A | Battersea A | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rob Willmoth | 2200 | 0 - 1 | Adam Bukojemski | 2380 | ||
| 2 | Alex Leslie | 2088 | 0 - 1 | Tim P. Wall | 2260 | ||
| 3 | Jason Covey | 1990 | 0 - 1 | Luca Buanne | 2005 | ||
| 4 | David Amior | 1900 | 0 - 1 | Denis Dupuis | 1870 | ||
| 0 - 4 | |||||||
In the Open Division, Board 4 was the first to finish. David Amior had repeated the line of the Scandinavian he played against me in the final round of the Club Championship. A position with castling on opposite sides arose, but David closed the queenside (where he was attacking) with …b4, while his opponent opened the g-file against David’s king. David’s opponent’s attack was consequently much stronger, and it duly won him the game.
Once again, we had two junior players, Alex and Jason, playing on the middle two boards. Previously this has been a recipe for great success, but this week they got into trouble.
Jason had a promising kingside attack, playing an excellent rook sacrifice to open the h-file. But he followed this with an incorrect knight sacrifice on g6, and his opponent defended. Jason managed to obtain some counterplay against Black’s exposed king, and might have saved the game with a difficult chance at the end, but ultimately his opponent was able to consolidate his extra material.
Meanwhile, Alex suffered a kingside attack after his opponent played a strong rook lift via d3. He wasn’t able to obtain enough queenside counterplay and was blown away in the early middlegame.
With the match already lost, our hope of taking any game points rested with Rob on Board 1. Unfortunately, however, he had gone badly wrong in the opening, was unable to complete his development, and was cut to shreds by his opponent’s bishop pair.
I have annotated three out of the four games in this match, as I think they were very interesting and instructive.
| Wall,T | 1–0 | Leslie,A | |||||||||||||||||
 | FM | London Online Chess League - Open2021 | | ||||||||||||||||
| MetroGnomes | MetroGnomes | Hendon B | Hendon B | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Henry Armburg-Jennings | 1795 | 1 - 0 | Chris Rogal | 1803 | ||
| 2 | Nicholas Nardecchia | 1465 | ½ - ½ | Anthony Kent | 1750 | ||
| 3 | Mark Nevison | 1443 | 1 - 0 | David Lewis | 1465 | ||
| 4 | Joshua Beckmann | 1390 | 0 - 1 | Stanley Jacobs | 1390 | ||
| 2½ - 1½ | |||||||
I had high hopes of a good result in the B team match, since we had equal or higher grades than our opponents on all boards. However, it began inauspiciously when David Lewis resigned after 14 moves, having lost his queen to an opening blunder. Sadly, he’d had a great position, spurning a couple of opportunities to trap his opponent’s bishop with g2-g4.
(We were assigned the wrong colours for this match, getting White on the odd boards when we should have had it on the even ones. Unfortunately I didn’t notice this in time to fix it before the round started. Whether it made any difference to the outcome, who can say!)
Stanley then levelled the scores, scoring our only full point of the round, having been better for most of the game. However, Chris lost on Board 1, after allowing his opponent to gain a space advantage on the queenside; he then offered a queen trade at a tactically inopportune moment, leaving him with a lost ending.
Therefore we needed Anthony to win in order to tie the match, on the board where we had the biggest grading advantage over our opponents. He had obtained a very promising minor piece ending, but with both players low on time, he rejected the opportunity to exchange his knight for his opponent’s bishop (which would have resulted in a very promising bishop-versus-knight situation), instead trading it for a knight, leaving a very drawish opposite-coloured bishop ending. This was duly drawn, resulting in a match defeat.
Many thanks to all who played! The final round of this LOCL season is next Tuesday, with the next season starting in early March. More to come on that soon.
You can find a list of all stories about the London Online Chess League here.