14-11-2022 Badgers Brook A v Stirling B

Badgers Brook A		v		Stirling B
Andrew Newton Kenny McGeoch Suzy Cooke Mark Cooke Jonathan Rowney	2007 1998 1969 1887 1622	1 - 0 1 - 0 1 - 0 1 - 0 ½ - ½	1569 1523 1513 1562 1487	Leyla Kim Brad Duthie Nathanael Loch Dave Hewitt Sean Flanagan
		4½ - ½

Thanks to Dave for this game, where he had White against Mark Cooke.

[Event "Badgers Brook A v Stirling B"] [Site "Badgers Brook CC"] [Date "2022.11.14"] [White "Hewitt, D"] [Black "Cooke, M"] [Result "0-1"] 1. d4 Nf6 2. Nf3 g6 3. Bf4 { A48 London System } Bg7 4. e3 d6 5. Bd3 O-O 6. O-O Nbd7 7. Nbd2 Nh5 8. Bg3 Nxg3 9. hxg3 e5 10. c3 Qe7 11. e4 Nf6 12. d5 Ng4 13. Nh4 f5 14. Be2 Nf6 15. exf5 gxf5 16. Qc2 Nxd5 17. Bc4 c6 18. Bxd5+ cxd5 19. Rae1 f4 20. Qd3 Be6 21. c4 e4 22. Qe2 e3 23. cxd5 Bxd5 24. Qd3 exf2+ 25. Kxf2 fxg3+ 26. Kg1 Qxh4 27. Rxf8+ Rxf8 28. Qxd5+ Kh8 29. Nf3 Qb4 30. Re7 Qxb2 31. Qxd6 Qf2+ 32. Kh1 Rxf3 33. Re8+ Rf8 34. Rxf8+ Qxf8 35. Qxg3 Bd4 36. Qh4 Qf1+ 37. Kh2 Qg1+ 38. Kh3 Qh1+ *

Quite similar to my recent loss to Graham Hamilton in the Grangemouth A match, although at least here I did have one brief opportunity to break out from the bind: if I play exf5 a move earlier than I actually did, on move 14 rather than 15, his Ng4 is hanging if he ends up with a R on f5. I only half saw this at best and was worried about discovered attacks generally if my Q ended up out in the open, but the computer likes it and clearly I should have gone for this - I might well have spotted it properly had I just played 14 exf5 anyway, as I almost did - I had quite a long think before opting for 14 Be2.

I deliberately gave up the d5 pawn a couple of moves later to try and get some activity and space, but it didn't come to anything and Mark played the latter half of the game very well. I missed until it was too late that his 25 ...fxg3+ was double check, and I almost resigned after 26 ...Qxh4 thinking I was getting mated on the spot, before realising that I could keep things going, for a while at least, with Nf3. But 29 ...Qb4 (played after quite a long think on his part) is a strong move and I was really just delaying the inevitable. I was skirmishing reasonably well at the end, and without much time on the clock - probably a benefit of the decent online form - but it wasn't good enough and I was well beaten.