The last competitive HR fixture this side of Christmas saw the plucky NLC battlers head off to the Athenaeum.
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It was a tough night of chess. The NLC found little to cheer on any of the top boards, with only our good friend Mark Taylor (Landsdowne) producing the goods on Board 7 to maintain his 100% record when turning out for the NLC, and Doctor Schady taking a half point.
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Overall score: Athanaeum 5.5 – 1.5 NLC.
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Some context is necessary, however. They were a very good team. Doctor Kirby, as ever manfully leading the charge from Board 1, was playing against Peter Lee, British Champion 1965 and multi-time member of the British Olympiad team. To get a sense of what Doctor Kirby was up against, here’s Spassky v Lee, Hastings 1968. That’s right. World Champion Spassky.
Doctor Kirby did well under the circumstances, and was clearly ahead for large parts of the game, before time trouble did for him:
(Annotations very kindly provided by Peter Lee and Doctor Kirby.)
Mister Widdicombe did not do quite so well. Inspired by reading about the Kasparov v Kramnik 2000 World Championship match that morning, he tried Kramnik’s Berlin Wall defence. It worked out better for Kramnik.
Our captain, Mister Trivedi, fought hard against a Scandanavian defence, but was hard pressed after his pawn structure was broken, and eventually went down.
The rest of the NLC team gave a good account of themselves, but none of the top six saw it home.
The Athenaeum is a terrific Club. The Clubhouse is breathtaking and the room we played in was delightful.
Dinner was of course superb.
