VAS SGA 7 wins it’s first match!

By Gerton Sluis

After the dust settled around eight p.m. of a full house youth chess evening at VAS, it was time to set up the beautiful wooden chess boards for our home match against the strong team of MSK. It was requested that the match would be played on first floor as MSK had one player in a wheel chair, for which we created an easily accessible board.

VAS 7 is a new team with a nice international mix of players, all with ratings with upward potential. Average rating of our line up for today: 1568.

The two earlier matches of this new team had ended in losses (one against our brothers from VAS 5 and one really close loss against Almere), so we were up for a big challenge again, against this time MSK, the leader in our league. 

After an hour I walked around to look at positions of all the 8 boards. I could not really identify winning or losing positions. I even think it was material equal on all boards. 

A bit later I learned that Arash (with white on board 4) felt that he had a good position. Indeed he had more play with an active Queen I noticed. However well he tried, but he could not convert the winning position and he accepted a draw offer from his opponent as his opponent had dangerous counterplay chances. ½– ½.

I played with white on board 2. I played Bird’s opening, but this did not seem to impress or surprise my opponent. Most of the small plans I had were nicely solved or avoided by my opponent. Then he formed a battery with bishop b7 and Queen c6 which looked dangerous at g2. I had a similar threat with bishop b2 and queen that could go to g4 to eye g7. Both threats did not materialize. I was able to neutralize the threat by blocking the center with e4. After that, the position was so solid and even, that I did not see concrete winning plans and a draw was agreed. 1-1.

Serina, from Jordan, played with black on board 3 an opponent who later told that he was from Damascus Syria. Serena played a solid game as we have seen her doing earlier. After agreeing a draw her opponent expressed his respect for her play by applauding her I saw.  1 ½ – 1 ½.

So very tied it was. Until Caspar reported a win on board 5 with black! He had played in an advance variant of the French I saw. Exchange of queens was offered but declined by his opponent. This was an inaccuracy according Caspar (and Stockfish). With a disguised attack on a knight, Caspar nicely sacrificed a knight for a pawn to win an extra knight! 

White avoids queen trade, black counters with Nxe5, threatening to take on c2!

After this, his opponent offered queen exchange which made the road to victory easier for Cas. The game ended with a nice bishop fork on king and rook after which Cas’s opponent resigned. Well done! 2 ½- 1 ½.

 

We were up! This started to look good!

The other four matches were very close. Evert-Jan, as a substitute playing on board 1 against MSK’s strongest player, played very impressive. Ricky was playing a very intense even battle against Lode (where do we know him from?), Tim was down on the clock but hanging in in his match and Roeland was fighting hard to keep equality.

Then Ricky somehow created an initiative that led to a two pawn advantage in an end game with a rook each and only pawns. It must have been the marching pawns on a and b file that caused the loss of pawns by Lode. Ricky won! 3 ½ – 1 ½.

Very close to a match point! But not yet there!

Then on board 1 the game was decided by Evert-Jan’s opponent by a passed pawn that was too much to handle. Opponent mentioned afterwards that it was a very exciting and well played match by Evert-Jan. I fully agree. 3 ½ – 2 ½. 

On board 6 Tim was still struggling against the clock and his opponent who had material advantage. At one time Tim could have recaptured a knight with his queen but that would expose her to all sorts of pins. Difficult choice to make, so he did not recapture but marched his king to, hopefully safety. Unfortunately, safety could not be reached.  3 ½  – 3 ½.

Then remained the game of Roeland on board 7 with black. I am not sure whether or not this was the last match to finish (or was it the one on board 6?). But it was a deciding match. I saw that Roeland’s opponents had a nasty pin on the black king on the H file. That was indeed the case. But a mistake was made in overestimating this pin by planting an undefended rook on g file. This was sharply noticed by Roeland and he just took the rook!  4 ½ – 3 ½.

Our first win!!! A really great team effort! Hope for more in the coming rounds!!