Long Road to Victory
On Tuesday (26/11/25) the D team took to the road to play Spondon.
My own game on board 4 started as a “swap-off-athon” and it looked like we would be finishing early, but it then turned into a slow positional pawn and minor piece late middlegame position.
First to finish was Garry on 3 with a win (final position pictured), quickly followed by a loss for Chris on board 1, both at about after around an hour of play.
Graham Pace hung on for a while but Alan looked comfortable throughout.
By this point, I felt that I was slightly better but offered my opponent a draw hoping that he would agree thus handing us the match. The Spondon skipper asked him to play on, however, and I was eventually able to grind out a 70 move win.
| Spondon | 1 - 3 | Derby D | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sheldon, Philip | 1615 | 1 - 0 | Cole, Chris | 1624 |
| 2 | Pace, Graham J | 1513 | 0 - 1 | Kennedy, Alan | 1617 |
| 3 | Gibson, Martin | 1118 | 0 - 1 | Sands, Garry | 1555 |
| 4 | Bramley, Douglas | 1290 | 0 - 1 | Ross, Colin | 1482 |
Colin Ross 26/11/25