Avengers 1st Team Narrowly Defeated By Table-Topping Surbiton
In the sixth round, the Avengers 1st Team was defeated by top of the table Surbiton in a tight match.
| Surbiton 1 | 2234 | Anglian Avengers 1 | 2260 | |||||
| 231 | w | Kalavannan, Koby | f | 2324 | 1 – 0 | Walker, Martin G | f | 2275 e |
| 232 | b | Josse, Mark | c | 2235 | ½ – ½ | Kanellopoulos, Panayotis | 2265 | |
| 233 | w | Ratnesan, Ranesh | 2258 | 1 – 0 | Plueg, Andreas | f | 2260 e | |
| 234 | b | Seymour, Timothy P | 2119 | 0 – 1 | Lewis, Andrew P | f | 2243 | |
| 2½ – 1½ | ||||||||
FM Koby Kalavannan nabbed a pawn against Martin’s Grunfeld. Martin never looked close to sufficient compensation, finally succumbing after a long endgame on move 52.
Mark Josse demonstrated why the Symmetrical English has a drawish reputation. Panagiotis could find nothing to make the game interesting, and split the point on move 27.
Tim Seymour was well prepared against Andy’s English, but appeared less comfortable in the endgame, and was slowly ground down in a lengthy knight v bishop struggle.
The match was decided by a wild Modern Benoni on B3. Ranesh Ratnesan went for an all-out king-side-attack. Andreas replied in kind on the queen-side. Unfortunately, Andreas’s attack came second.
Congratulations to Surbiton on coming out on top in a closely fought encounter. All 4 Surbiton players seemed well-prepared, demonstrating the value of intelligent opening selection. However, with only a slight twist to the plot, the story of this round might have had a very different ending!