The O’Hanlon’s promotion push is over after only picking up half a point against Blanchardstown last night, but we did win the “strength in depth” debate when our Bodley B only dropped half a point against Portmarnock, relegated from the BA last season, to all but seal third place.
Before all that, there was also the start of Saturday’s Armstrong game with Balbriggan; John Healy went down in 20 moves – one of the first to finish all night in fact! – meaning his chances of a board prize are now gone.
In the Bodley, Portmarnock scratched board 5, but still had two of their three top scorers from last season, when they were relegated on tie break with a score just 3½ points short of 50%. One of those was on 6/6 on board 1 this season; he came up against Alex Byrne, on 4/4. That game was the last to finish, but it was still a relatively quick affair – Alex winning inside two hours when a piece and pawn up in a rook and pawn ending. Mark had started us off on the win when winning a typical Bodley game in his first game as white – a nice tactic (which had been on the board the previous two moves) yielded a pawn; the resultant pressure saw him go a piece up, but then a flurry of swaps went wrong after his opponent threw in an unexpected knight move and he was only three pawns for an exchange up. When the pawns started to fall, he looked in trouble, but his opponent fortunately missed his rook getting pinned to his king, and victory was sealed. Declan won a pawn on move 4 which his opponent didn’t bother to recapture for some reason and carried that through to victory, while William didn’t quite get the usual attack out of an Austrian Attack and, though he won a pawn, he should have been in big trouble but his opponent overlooked a direct king attack, and both were happy to escape with a draw.
It means the table is like this –
Only Malahide and Blanchardstown can overtake us now. Malahide face Gonzaga next, having just lost 5-0 to Drogheda, while Blanchardstown also have to play Gonzaga, and are out in Benildus in two weeks’ time, so it looks unlikely either will be able to catch us with the lead we have.
In the next room, meanwhile, Blanchardstown paid us the dubious honour of turning up with their strongest team of the season in a game between two promotion contenders. We had reckoned on John Delaney FM maybe throwing in a rare appearance – as he did; just his third game of the season – but we hadn’t figured on them finding a 1980 to make his debut on board 3. Eddie Gahan, who had put himself down on 3 to avoid the two 2000s and keep up his board prize hopes, wasn’t best pleased!
We’d kind of thrown in the towel with regards promotion from the moment Blanchardstown showed us their scoresheet, and the match became a learning exercise coupled with a scramble to avoid a whitewash. We performed about as well as could be expected, all things considered – we lost the top four boards, where we were outrated by a combined 2500 points, but none were embarrassingly quick. Odhrán was a pawn up for a while against John Delaney on 1, but as Dylan saw last year, being material up against an FM is probably risky! Odhrán, Dylan and Eddie all saw their performance rating for the season increase despite losing, such was the disparity in ratings.
However, the other two boards – where we were “only” outrated by 600 points – were both very tight affairs which went right down to the wire. Nicky was a pawn down in a major piece endgame, while Desmond had his opponent’s rook hemmed in on h8, with king on g8, and looked like he could muster up a good attack. Both were well up on the clock too – 40 minutes against 20 in both cases. But things went wrong later on – Nicky made an illegal move and had to give up two minutes on her clock, doubling her opponent’s time, while Desmond was 13 v 2 minutes up but suddenly facing a bit of an attack after his opponent threw in a g5 push to break up Desmond’s kingside pawns (on h2, g3 and f4). Desmond ended up going down to an unfortunate defeat, and it was left to Nicky to avoid the whitewash – perhaps fortunately. Down to Q+3 v Q+2, with all the pawns on the same side, she was aiming for perpetual check but then moved her queen from a dark square to a light square – an important difference which gave the possibility of her opponent blocking a check with check, forcing the queens off. This happened in the end, though with her opponent down to 15 seconds, he offered a draw – 15 seconds just wasn’t enough time to convert the win.
So this is how the table looks –
Promotion is between the top three; fourth is now our aim. The three teams just below us have a match in hand, but all have to play one of the top three, who’ll be going all out for points as the season closes. Finglas away is next for the O’Hanlon; the club’s attention now turns to the Heidenfeld’s fight for survival in Inchicore tonight.