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.

ChessBase

Hewitt, D–Cooke, MBadgers Brook A v Stirling BBadgers Brook CC14.11.2022

1.d4 f6 2.f3 g6 3.f4 A48 London System g7 4.e3 d6 5.d3 0-0 6.0-0 bd7 7.bd2 h5 8.g3 xg3 9.hxg3 e5 10.c3 e7 11.e4 f6 12.d5 g4 13.h4 f5 14.e2 f6 15.exf5 gxf5 16.c2 xd5 17.c4 c6 18.xd5+ cxd5 19.ae1 f4 20.d3 e6 21.c4 e4 22.e2 e3 23.cxd5 xd5 24.d3 exf2+ 25.xf2 fxg3+ 26.g1 xh4 27.xf8+ xf8 28.xd5+ h8 29.f3 b4 30.e7 xb2 31.xd6 f2+ 32.h1 xf3 33.e8+ f8 34.xf8+ xf8 35.xg3 d4 36.h4 f1+ 37.h2 g1+ 38.h3 h1+

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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.