Round 5 (Thursday November 1st)

Games
Well, what did I say? The team certainly were 'up for it', a fantastic result!

Wales (38) - Monaco (39)
1. Richard Jones FM 2327 (W) 0.5 I. Efimov GM 2446
2. Tim Kett 2257 0.5 P. Van Hoolandt FM 2245
3. Alan Spice 2170 1 - 0 W. Iclicki 2147
4. John Trevelyan 2191 1 - 0 J-M Rapaire 1966

Games in the order they finished (without having analysed them)

John immediately got into his tried and trusted ending (1.e4 d6 2.d4 e5 3.dxe5 dxe5 4.Qxd8+ Kxd8) and played it with his usual efficiency. Other than the Queen exchange and a later rook exchange on d8, White only got one piece into John's half the whole game (46 moves). At the end John's clock read 1 hour 16 minutes remaining (started at 1 hour 30 !), the result was never in doubt.

I helped Tim in his preparation for this game, and after 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6, his opponent had always played 3.Nf3, so we looked at various options against this. That is, until today, when he played 3.Nc3 and a Nimzo Qc2 game developed quite slowly. White got a slight advantage with the 2 bishops (yet again !), but with only an open d file, Tim was able to comfortably maintain the balance and a draw was agreed in a one piece ending just after the first time control.

Alan correctly guessed that his opponent would transpose into the Caro Kann against his 1.Nc3, and that is indeed what happened (1.Nc3 d5 2.e4 c6 3.d4 dxe4 4.Nxe4 Bf5) and a standard position arose with both players having castled q-side. Preparation this time was excellent, as the players reached a Q + R + B(White) v Q + R + Knight (Black) which we had looked at the previous night. Alan was thinking of exchanging the B (on e5) for Black's knight on f6, doubling Black's pawn's in the process, but Richard and I persuaded him that his chances lay in the pure B v N ending. That duly transpired, and Alan won this ending on move 60.

This was the first time this championship that Richard had played anyone below 2600, but it was still another GM and one of Eastern European extraction (i.e. very good !). Efimov was capable of playing all sorts of replies to Richard's 1.e4. In the end it turned out to be a solid Caro Kann (1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 dxe4 4.Nxe4 Nf6 5.Nxf6+ exf6). The game proceeded steadily with both sides castling q-side, before Richard unfortunately mislaid a pawn. But what a rearguard action he put in, eventually reaching a Q + P ending (White still one down) which Richad played excellently! Both sides queened a pawn, but the second queens were immediately exchanged, and eventually the position got down to Q + 'b' pawn (White) against Q + 'f' + 'h' pawns (Black), at which point Black abandoned his winning attempts by capturing the 'b' pawn and allowing both his own to be taken. A great effort by Richard.

That's more like it, onwards and upwards as they say. We're now on 3 match points along with 5 other teams, with 4 teams below us (Scotland on 2 match points, and Monaco, Cyprus and Luxembourg all on 1 match point). Scotland will have the bye in round 6, so we could end up playing Cyprus or Luxembourg, or, having seen the vagaries of the pairing system, someone else very strong!

That's for another day, it's the rest day tomorrow, so we're off celebrating (! - in case anyone gets the wrong idea, the report is actually sent well after it is written/we've gone drinking, we couldn't be seen to be acting in an unprofessional way .....).


Stuart Hutchings
Captain, Wales

PS: in round 6 we are playing Montenegro.
JT