Round 8 (Monday November 5th)

Today we faced bottom seeded Cyprus, and after yesterday's absorbing match in which B won all 4 games, who would have believed we were for another fluctuating struggle, this time resulting in W winning all 4 games.

Wales (38) 2 - 2 Cyprus (40)
1. Richard Jones FM 2327 (W) 1 - 0 P. Savva 2099
2. Tim Kett 2257 0 - 1 A. Antoniou 2163
3. Charles Morris 2198 1 - 0 V. Aristotelous 1960
4. Alan Spice 2170 0 - 1 P. Klerides FM 2183

Games in the order they finished (without having analysed them), though not strictly true tonight as we got off to a disastrous start, with Alan miscalculating a piece sacrifice on move 8, and only ending up with 2 pawns for it (see below).

The Cypriots seemed initially to be well prepared, and in Richard's game B followed a similar path in a Sicilian Taimanov to one Richard had faced in a previous round. But it soon became apparent that B's knowledge was rather superficial and Richard won a pawn and exerted a strong bind on the position, converting this into a comfortable N v B ending which he won with ease. Richard seems to have the ability to easily put away less strong opposition.

Tim as B played 1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 f5 and a complicated opening ensued with both players using up a lot of time. The players castled on opposite sides, and pursued their separate pawn storms. Tim played a move weakening his K's position rather than reach a better position by playing in the centre, and this in the end was to prove costly. Both sides pressed on, but with time running short, Tim made a fatal mistake allowing a snap mate in 3, when he was probably still in a complicated but equal position.

Alan was next to finish, and credit him for putting up stern resistance after his early blunder, eventually succumbing in a B + 2 v 4 pawns position.

Charles was W in a KID g3 setup, gaining the 2 bishops and a space advantage, but B managed to close up the position. Charles steadily gained more space and exchanged some heavy pieces to reach a R + B + N v R + 2N, and here W was able to make serious inroads into B's position despite only the 'h' file being open. Charles manouevred his previosuly bad bishop to a4, then brought his rook from a1-a3-b3, followed by Bc6 winning the 'b' pawn as B ran out of space in which to manouevre. B desperately scrificed a piece, but Charles mopped up efficiently.

So 2 drawn matches in a row, and, as with yesterday, we clearly had the better chances, but again couldn't quite get the 2 match points.

Tomorrow is the final round and the pairings are now due (22:00) as the round starts at 11:00 rather than the previous 15:30. As I said yesterday, it's now very difficult to predict, both with the bye and remembering exactly who has played the back markers Cyprus and Monaco. We would fancy Scotland, but I suspect they will have to play Cyprus. Oh well, let's go and find out (!), and do our best tomorrow.


Stuart Hutchings
Captain, Wales

PS: We play Austria tomorrow.
Not good news
JT