Broadstairs Chess Club meets on Mondays at 7.30pm, upstairs at the Bradstow Mill, High Street, Broadstairs. New members are always welcome. For more information contact Andrew Flood 07880 724893, email: andrewflood042@gmail.com
Broadstairs chess team visited Bridge for a Miller Cup match missing a few of their highest rated players, but nonetheless managed to come close to gaining a result, certainly closer than the final score would suggest.
Bridge fielded an exceptionally strong team, outrating Broadstairs on all seven boards.
First to finish was Board 7, then Board 6 and then Board 4, resulting in Bridge taking an early 3 – 0 lead, before things started to take an unexpected turn. Samuel on Board 1 achieved the first Broadstairs score with a very solid draw against his highly rated opponent.
Bob Cronin on Board 5 got an unexpected win against his opponent who had 508 more rating points. In what was overall an excellent game of good solid chess by Bob, he held his own in the opening and middle game before going into an end game which started off as a likely looking draw but soon deteriorated into a likely lost end game. He managed however to shock and checkmate his opponent to claim a win.
At 3.5 v 1.5 all eyes were on the remaining 2 games where Broadstairs Chris Stampe and Paul Carfrae both had the edge and the better positions against their opponents. With too many good moves to choose from Paul managed to find the one wrong move which effectively gave his opponent the win against the run of play.
Last game to finish was on Board 2 which saw Chris Stampe lose the end game of a match that had been played to a high standard and had presented opportunities for Chris to get a positive result.
The final score of 5.5 v 1.5 and a Bridge win did not reflect the closeness of the encounter.