St Benildus marked the 50th National Club Championships with our first ever win, and in doing so will travel to Albania for the European Club Cup in October as champions of Ireland.
Our hopes were dealt a blow even before we travelled when Kavin had to withdraw three days beforehand.. The best we could do at short notice was to add me to the squad, costing us 400 points. Still, there was a big gap between the top four teams and the bottom four, and with five ECC spots up for grabs, we really just had to avoid an upset to ensure our place on the plane to Albania.
We opened against seventh seeds UCD – actually a tougher opponent than sixth seed Limerick, whose two 1500s only played three games between them, leaving the rest to an 1100 and an 800. But any worries that this was a banana skin were comprehensively dismissed early on, with Kevin and Ben going material up relatively early on, Kevin when fairly clinically nullifying a Kilkenny Gambit (1. d4 Nf6 2. g4). Both went on to win, Brendan added another point after a mild panic when his opponent won material on the queenside, which Brendan hadn’t noticed as he reckoned – rightly – that there was far more to be won on the kingside. Leon and Lara added further wins, and we were denied a whitewash when I could only draw on bottom board – though my opponent was only 1400-rated, that was the only half point he was to drop all weekend.
So pretty much a perfect start – 6-0s are very rare at the NCC; exactly one a year since we started back entering in 2017 – and the round 2 draw was very interesting. Instead of playing Gonzaga, as we had expected, we were up against fifth seeds Galway, who had stunned Ennis 3½-2½ in the first round. This was a spectacular result – Galway’s expected score was 0.57, with the biggest individual upset being their 1400 ICU-rated board 5 beating Rory Quinn FM. From our point of view, two match wins would pretty much guarantee the required top five place – but if Galway could repeat their round 1 heroics, then we could end up facing Ennis and Malahide on the Sunday, with a very nervy wait to see if we could manage that second match win.
And we didn’t start well. I went for a hack attack – queen and rook on g4/g3 – and found it just left me with uncoordinated pieces and a weak pawn on e4, after which my position fell apart. Another poor result – and another under-rated opponent; this one scored 3/4 over the weekend, even after moving up to board 4 for the last two rounds.
Kevin drew, leaving us ½-1½ down and looking at a couple of difficult positions. Leon was piece for two pawns up, but his opponent had central pawns advancing. Ben was a pawn up; it had made its way to a7 but was being held up there, and the rest of his position wasn’t great. Lara and Brendan were level enough, and it wasn’t clear where we were going to get two more points from, especially when Lara then went a pawn down and Brendan sacced a piece.
But we turned it around in style – Leon broke down the centre and, now clear material up, won. Ben resolved the issue of the a7 pawn in his favour and reached N+3 v 4; all the pawns were on the same side of the board, so patience was needed but the result was never in doubt. Lara had plenty of play and turned things around to confirm the match win. That left Brendan – myself, Kevin and Leon all thought his sac was nonsense, but it worked, and the worries of an hour earlier we long forgotten!
So we began Sunday level with Gonzaga on four match points, and up against our old rivals on top board. More important, though, was ECC qualification, and back-of-the-envelope maths said that if we gained or UCD lost 3½ across the day – across 24 games – then we would be uncatchable in fifth spot and assured of qualification. It was entirely possible we could lose both Sunday matches – a loss to Gonzaga would mean Malahide were the likely final round opponents – but it was highly unlikely that we would, for example, lose 6-0 twice while UCD only dropped 3½ points over two games to overtake us. Still, where else was the drama going to come from on the final day?
Against Gonzaga, I got us off to a great start with another nice Dutch win for my catalogue. How to continue in this position?
Kev McHugh added a draw against Anthony Bourached, whom he had been soundly beaten by in Austria. By this stage, UCD were 3-1 up, and so we had 2½ of the 3½ points we needed to confirm our ECC spot. Ben lost a fairly wild game where he had sacced in a desperate attempt to create complications. Lara was slightly better against Gordon Freeman in a 2R+B v 2RvN endgame, Leon was a pawn down against Killian but had chances of holding, while Brendan was still in an unclear middlegame.
Leon did hold his game, which reduced to R+1 v R, and with UCD confirmed as 5-1 winners, we were now half a point away from qualification. Brendan’s game started getting interesting – he gave up a rook for two pieces – but soon enough a draw was agreed, and qualification was assured. Lara was now close to lost in her game, but 2½ was still a solid score against a side with three FMs, and our main objective was achieved.
With no drama to report still, let’s go back to my position. I had been eyeing up the idea of an f3 push, and when my opponent let control of it go, I had to go for it. 1…f3 2.Bxf3 Rxf3 3.gxf3 (better here is Nxe6 to get counterplay down the c-file; he doesn’t get time in the game) 3…Bxh3 4.Kh2 and here I knew I had 4…Bxf1 5.Rxf1 Qh4+ and a draw, so I had time to work out where the win was. At the outset, I had planned 4…Qh4 5.Rh1 Rxf3, and then I realised with slight panic that the rook I was going to take on f3 with was in fact on a8… But as I looked at the position, I realised the extra tempo didn’t really matter, so I turned down the draw and continued 4…Qh4 5.Rh1 Rf8 6.Qe2 – this was the stage where I had stopped calculating and left it up to white to try find a way out of the mess he was in, and indeed this fails to, among other things, 6…Bf1+ 7.Kg1 Qxh1+ 8.Kxh1 Bxe2, at which my opponent resigned. In the bar downstairs, Blair Connell came over to congratulate me on the finale, probably the highest player ever to offer me that compliment!
Then Leon came over to report, with typically fraternal affection, that Lara and Gordon were both outdoing themselves in trying to lose the game, and that all three results were possibilities based on how well they were playing badly. This was news indeed, and we decamped back upstairs to see Lara was a piece down, but had a pawn on f7 supported by a king. Gordon had assumed there was a way of delivering a fork to stop it queening, at which his pawn would run to victory. But though there was a number of threatened forks, there ultimately wasn’t an actual one, and the pawn promoted. Not quite a Galway v Ennis level upset, but a great result nonetheless. Killian Delaney walked into the room just after the game finished and was told we’d won; he did a double take at the news and said “How the fuck did he lose that?!” which, by all accounts, is actually a perfectly reasonable reaction to the result.
And suddenly the last round was quite interesting. With Gonzaga having already played ourselves and Malahide, they were left to take on second-place Ennis, while we got Malahide, the same draw we would have gotten had we lost round 3. But instead of it being a dead rubber, it now meant we just needed a draw to take our first ever National Club Championships – and against a club who’d been our nemesis in recent times who knew that, if they won, they could take the title instead.
Early signs, though, were that Malahide were running scared. Patryk Brozynski offered Ben a draw on move 1, and Ger Buckley offered me one on move 11. Those two did end in draws though, while Kev McHugh let an early edge slip to lose a R v B ending where his two extra pawns weren’t enough to compensate for the exchange deficit.
Brendan also drew, and we were 1½-2½ down. Ennis were beating Gonzaga, which meant Malahide couldn’t win the tournament – it was between us and Ennis, but we needed to take 1½ from the last two games. Leon was a pawn up but under pressure, while Lara was a pawn down but with only queens and opposite-colour bishops on the board, a draw was probably still the most likely result. Leon then won a second pawn but was, if anything, under even more pressure for it, and Lara agreed a draw to bring the score to 2-3. Leon now needed to beat Jacob on 1.
There then followed almost an hour of the most dramatic chess you’re likely to see, all played on increments, and with every other game in the competition finished. As Jacob knocked on the door of the fortress Leon was trying to set up, he took a defended pawn with a knight; taking back would allow a rook to invade. The growing crowd all saw a queen check for Leon which would also pick up the knight and leave him piece and pawn up – the two players at the board were the only two who missed it. Instead, Leon’s position started to collapse – he lost another pawn, and then an exchange. His only compensation was a bishop trying to block up the position and a c-pawn which had gone for a run.
But the c-pawn – defended by the bishop – tied Jacob up, so he decided, possibly unnecessarily, to sac back the exchange on it; we now had Q, R+3 v Q, R+2; Jacob with a, b and f pawns, Leon with a and b. Leon got the queens off, and with his pawns better defended, he picked up first the a-pawn, then the b-pawn – it was now R+2 v R+1, and it seemed to be winning. All three pawns were now running, and we reached this position –
Now we really are winning – so time for a couple of final twists as the crowd gathered round. Here, 1…Kc5 is the human continuation; white can’t even play 2.Ra6 Kc4 3.Rf6 because of 3…Rxf6 4.Kxf6 when black promotes with check, but Leon played 1…b2 – technically the quickest move to mate, but it does run the risk of going into the dreaded QvR ending, though in reality the rook is too far away from the king for the ending to be too troublesome. But things really got interesting a few moves later –
Now the quickest to mate is 1…Kc7, threatening 2…Qb8+ and 3…Qd8#. White can only delay this by 2.Re7+ Kd6 3.Rd7+ Ke6 but now white is in complete zugswang – the king can’t move because of Qb8#, the pawn can’t move because of Rxf8#, the rook can’t leave the seventh because of Qe7#, but it also can’t leave the d-file because of Qb8#. Another easy win is 1…Qd6, with the threat of 2…Qb8+ 3.Ke7 Qb7+ 4.Ke6 Qxf7+, or if white defends with 2.Re7, then, among other things, 2…Qb8+ 3.Kd7 Qc7+ 4.Ke6 Re1+ picks up the rook.
But no. Leon played 1…Re1. Around the board, a lot of eyes were opened quite wide – queen versus bishop’s pawn on the seventh is a notoriously difficult ending. Was this even a win any more? Had we just thrown away the NCC? The game continued 2.Rxe1 Qxe1+ 3.Kf8 – and now if white gets to the g-file it is a draw, because if, say, 3…Qe6?? 4.Kg8 Qg6 5.Kh8! and now Qxf7 is stalemate. So Leon played 3…Qg6, avoiding stalemate traps, but is there a win? The game – still on increments of course – continued 4.Qg6 Ke7 5.Qg7 Ke8 –
And now the point is 5…Kc7!, when 6.f8=Q allows Qd7#. Had the king been one square further away, it would have been a draw. Instead, the finale was 6.Ke7 Qg5 7.Kf8 (Ke8 8.Qd8#) and Leon moved his king, via d7 (which would have been stalemate) to d6, and mate next move.