European Senior Team Championship, Round 2

Report from Rudy:

Luck can't last forever. We had a downfloat to a Danish team, who on paper are slightly lower than yesterday's Austria, but whose players are more closely graded, providing strength in depth. So everybody was again facing far stronger opposition. Added to which every player seemed to be able to avoid our preferred opening lines.

John Thornton's game was the first to finish, featuring an unusual 2.b4 against the Dutch. A complex Stonewall Dutch resulted when a slight misjudgement meant that the base of the Stonewall collapsed on e6. After that, faced with a Space Invaders array of pawns coming through the centre, John resigned. Colin Gilbert on bottom got a solid position against his opponent's cautious English opening, and after some pieces had swapped off, Colin decided to turn his attention to the Wh K side, which induced his opponent to sue for peace. An excellent result against an opponent rated nearly 500 points higher! Meanwhile in an odd Q side Opening Iolo Jones's opponent found a neat way of piling pressure onto Iolo's K by a Rf6-h6 manoeuvre, and a later pseudo sac of a piece lead to Bl being a couple of pawns up. But Wh held on and it got down to both sides at less than 2 minutes, relying on the increment to keep afloat.Then a nasty exchange sac by Sloth succeeded in gaining access to the Wh K. Richard continued the saga of long games, though this time he was not the last to finish. A Gurgenidze Caro-Kann structure had at one stage a diamond pattern of Bl pawns on e4,d5,e6 and f5. That e pawn was passed, and Richard fought his way to activate his R behind the enemy lines. In the end despite Bl having passed pawns on e4 and d4, he had to concede that Wh's pawn on a6 was a sufficient counterweight. So, in the end a 3-1 loss, but it still leaves Wales well ahead of expectations.