Disappointment and heartbreak as East Grinstead triumphed 4-2 on Monday night, retaining the McArthur Cup.
Our boys and girl couldn’t have done much more, that was the absolute strongest team we could possibly field but East Grinstead brought an even stronger team with them!
Some really interesting games which you would expect from such quality on display.
First to finish with an early draw was Francis (black). Got into a strange position after the opening both fianchetto’ed on the g file, a pretty symmetrical affair and the queens off on move 11 on the ‘a’ file??? This left Francis with a knight on the rim but had a little initiative although he said in the analysis he hadn’t got a clue what was going on. Computer gave white 1.5+ up with correct play but Peter Kemp said he wouldn’t have found the moves to get to that position so a draw was a fair result. Ng5 after Qxa4, Nxa4, b3 and a draw agreed.
Rasa opened with her customary English opening as was very solid until a slight inaccuracy/mistake which I missed and her position collapsed quickly although her opponent said it was defendable but it wasn’t pleasant and Rasa was struggling with time so it would have a been tough ask for her to find the correct responses to hold it together.
John had good opening (with black) facing an English-ish, set up with a Kings Indian Defence, got a good lead in development and pressure against h3 with a Q+B battery, however his opponent got back in the game and John was hit with a bit of crisis of confidence as he had been blundering a lot in recent games and so offered a draw which was accepted. A good result given that he was nearly 100 points outgraded and had the black pieces.
Daniel (white) came out fighting, blitzing out his moves until move 11, then once the dust had settled, he had this super centre pawn duo, good bishop v bad bishop and pressure down the open c file. In the car home, Daniel admitted he had never had that position before, which made me chuckle, how he blitzed out his moves like that and still had a great position with no theory, gives hope to us lesser mortals. An exchange of queens on g6 gave Daniel a teeny tiny advantage that was snuffed out later in the game with the pushing of said pawn destroying Daniel’s King cover and lots of mating threats, coupled with the pushing of pawns on the queenside that was difficult to stop. Eventually arriving on the second rank and it was time to resign.
Henry opened well, getting a great lead in development against a dutch with his catalan/KIA setup and looking to double fianchetto but went Ba3 and exerted a lot of pressure along the diagonal. In the end his development/pressure dwindled as his opponent kept swapping off pieces and it resulted in a same bishop ending 6v6 with Henry having the good bishop. His opponent refused to accept a draw much to the annoyance of everyone as the match had ended (this was the last game to finish and EG had already won 3.5-1.5). His chess etiquette was lacking all evening, having during the game moving and pressing the clock with different hands and consulting with his captain while Henry was trying to concentrate.
The titanic struggle on board 1 was a good watch between Mark Rich (black) and Chris Baker. Opened as English-ish then Mark morphed into a Najdorf structure but against a central bind, it was really hard to see how he would fix his backward d6 pawn with white pawns on e4 & c4. Anyway it went really positional and Chris manoeuvred pieces from the queenside to the Kingside then smashed up Mark’s King position where he had his King hiding in the corner behind a lone pawn but a semi open g file. Then it came, the queen retreating to d2 from h6 after being threatened by Rf6 forming a queen-sandwich against Mark’s d pawn which was only lightly defended. In came the rook to take the pawn and go material up but then Mark found this awesome Nd4 move trapping the rook which he had to give up an exchange otherwise potentially losing a queen, Rxf6 doesn’t work as Nf3+ is just nasty. After Rxd4 exd4 Qxd4, f4 was played and few moves later a draw was agreed and East Grinstead won the Cup.
East Grinstead came ready for the fight and although we got the very best team out that we could they still out-graded us. We may have call up and fly in our GM’s Stuart Conquest and Bogdan next year if we want to win this, the standard has got really high.
Many congratulations to East Grinstead on a fine display and winning the McArthur Cup 2025.
Congratulations to our own Henry Cove, who was the competition’s highest scorer with 2.5/3
Non playing captain: Mason Woodhams
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