After two honourable defeats in their opening two games – both against the title favourites – the Bodley B recorded their first win of the season tonight with a comfortable and impressive win over Naomh Barróg A.
Naomh Barróg have proven a bogey team for us in the past, but that may be a thing of the past after our As won 4½-½ there earlier in the month, and the Bs followed it up with a win which could have been by a wider margin. Richard was first finished, done in little more than an hour when a quickly-played game reached a pawn ending where Richard was the first to promote, duly stopped his opponent from doing the same and delivered mate.
The other games took a while longer – we were left waiting a good hour for result number two to come in. It was Mark Dennehy who delivered it, going a piece down before picking up a rook which – with its attendant knight – hadn’t moved from the corner. When his opponent tried to make some material back by snatching a pawn, Mark delivered mate in return.
Around the same time, Cal – who had an exchange for a pawn – picked up a piece with a nice tactic which left both queens hanging. He picked up another piece, gave up an exchange to get rid of more of his opponent’s pieces, wove a nice mating net around his opponent’s king –
– duly played 1. … Re1?? and immediately saw what he’d done! This being the Bodley, that wasn’t quite the end of it as white actually resigned, but we had to allow the draw to stand in all fairness!
On 1, William was a piece for two pawns down and it looked like his opponent was holding William’s two central connected passed pawns at bay. William took advantage of a nasty pin which his opponent never resolved though, picked up a piece and was only stopped from queening by way of ruinous loss of material for his opponent.
So it was 3½-½ – and should have been 4-0 – but Naomh Barróg did get one back in the last game to finish when Declan – playing on board 3 but against their highest-rated player – fell victim to a typically nasty KID king-side pawn storm, and with heavy pieces and a bishop bearing down on his king, the game was only ever going to end one way.
Still, a good win over a side who’d drawn their two previous matches; three of the results make it into our High Fives. Next up is struggling Skerries at home. Another good result there and the league table could start to look quite decent!