Glasgow Montrose Chess Club will be closed on Thursday January 29th, on account of the fact that both the ‘A’ and ‘B’ Teams are playing away games.  The club will open again as usual on February 5th at 7:30pm.  See you there!

Welcome to the 2012-13 season!  The GMCC kicked off the Glasgow League with a fixture between the ‘A’ and ‘B’ teams last Thursday (both are now rather inconveniently in the second division).  The ‘A’ team did pretty well for a side apparently without a captain, both in the haggling over players which typically starts the season off, and in the games themselves.

As the ‘B’ team captain, it is too painful to dwell on the night’s play, so I merely reproduce the results below:

The ‘B’ team beat Hamilton ‘D’ in last Thursday’s Div. 3 fixture.  Results are as below

The ‘B’ Team, playing at home, beat Bellshill ‘B’ in the Division 3 match which took place last Thursday. A hard-fought match, with draws for both Jims on boards one and two, but sadly for the visitors, a bottom board default and a loss on board three sealed their fate.

Robin Templeton reports on last Thursday’s (10th Nov.) victory over Inverclyde:

Glasgow Montrose triumph

“GM pulled off a come from behind win against Inverclyde at the Novotel. This is the team’s first league triumph on returning to the bigtime and offers hope that it will be one of many.

“The evening started off well with Bahloul opening up the g file to go after black’s king before smartly castling queenside and resuming the attack and bringing home the win. Then Inverclyde struck back with two wins on top boards where the rating difference of 200 points told. I got bashed on the white squares and could not avoid checkmate. Edd almost reached equality with black on top board but the position of the pieces favoured his opponent. Sam played carefully to reach a blocked position with knight and seven pawns each to hold the draw. Kenny slowly built up a space advantage against Stephen who makes light of his visual impairment. Kenny won two pawns before his opponent dropped a bishop.

“The match is now 2.5 each with three games remaining. The tension mounts. George skillfully built up pressure and then when his opponent tried to activate his position, George delivered a two move mate. Norman’s game took a turn for the worse after having the edge in the middlegame. His opponent had a dangerous pawn on the seventh but only 23 seconds left on the clock. A draw was agreed. 4 – 3 to Montrose with one game remaining. Beni on his league debut had the task of pulling off the match win. He did not disappoint. R+3 pawns up against R+2 pawns all on the king side should be a book draw but it still has to be demonstrated. Beni won the game on the flag fall. The match was ours 5 – 3.

“This is a tremendous fightback from 2 – 1 down at one point. This shows a resilience on the bottom boards that bodes well for the future.”

Thanks to Robin Templeton for the following match report:

News of a famous win last night. Following up last years win over the eventual Dunbartonshire league winners Bearsden in a league match. Glasgow Montrose gave them a repeat dose on their home turf again. GM knocked out Bearsden who have been the KO champions for the last three years. Bearsden captain Mel Burt must have had a premonition. He  took one look at our team and decided he had to strengthen his with the addition of Jeff Webb at Board 1. The home team’s top three were all over 1900 . That’s the way we like it!

First point of the night was claimed by myself playing white on board one. My opponent got into an awful fankle and ended up losing the exchange and pawns. He struggled on for a while but I took my time.

Next to finish was Norman on board three who built up steady pressure. He cleaned up with rook and pawn on the 7th rank against king and bishop for another point. We were on easy street with two games still going. The KO match was ours on board count.

Next to finish was Bahloul. Houdini would be more apt as he conjured a half point out of two pawn deficit in a rook and pawn endgame. The motto is never resign rook and pawn endgames – they are tricky to win.

Despite a heroic last stand – his opponent was down to less than a minute – Kenny had to give up. Kenny struggled manfully with the black pieces but could not overcome the handicap of a rook out of play.

After the slagging we got at the beginning of the match we told our sporting hosts they better wheel out  Grandmaster Aagard and International Master Greet the next time GM come calling!