The Bronowski Trophy Competition

London Business Chess Inter-League Championship

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/ins.chess/bronowski/

Banks v Ins | Legal v Comm | Legal v Ins | Banks v Comm | Legal v Banks | Comm v Ins

The 2008-09 Competition

Insurance opened their defence of the Bronowski away to Banks. In a very tight match, Insurance pinched the point by the narrowest margin. Meanwhile, Legal and Commercial encountered logistical problems in getting enough clocks to the venue, resulting in two boards being declared void. Their match was even tighter, finishing 5-5.

The second round of matches saw Insurance win heavily against Legal while Commercial won nearly as heavily against the Banks. This set up a 'winner takes all' final round, Insurance needing only a draw in the final pairing with Commercial to retain the silver knight whereas Commercial needed to win, while at the other end, Legal needed only a draw to avoid the wooden spoon, while Banks needed to win.

In the contest for the wooden spoon, Legal survived the concession of a board by default and did very well to hold Banks to a 6-6 draw.

Commercial and Insurance both assembled representative squads with Commercial just having the edge on paper. There was nothing much in the results all evening, until Commercial edged into a vital lead at the death to take the Bronowski by the odd point. Many congratulations to Mike and his squad for a well-contested and deservedly successful campaign.

Thanks to all the teams for completion of the programme, with only one minor hitch; thankfully, this did not harm the the chances of either of the teams involved. The new 12-board format at least enabled all sides to declare a full team for all fixtures; let us hope that we can resist the need to reduce boards any further for some while yet.

Ian Hunnable

Banks v Ins | Legal v Comm | Legal v Ins | Banks v Comm | Legal v Banks | Comm v Ins | Top

United Banks v Insurance

Played 27th January 2009, at NatWest Bank, 1 Princes Street

Insurance conceded a default due to a mistake over the venue.

Banks v Ins | Legal v Comm | Legal v Ins | Banks v Comm | Legal v Banks | Comm v Ins | Top

Legal v Commercial

Played 27th January 2009, at S.J. Berwin, 10 Queen Street Place

Mike Wickham explains: "Unfortunately,  one of my players had promised to provide five clocks for the match, but was prevented by a traffic jam from arriving at a reasonable time."

In the circumstances, the teams agreed that the affected boards should be declared void. The Controller has accepted the result as reported.

Banks v Ins | Legal v Comm | Legal v Ins | Banks v Comm | Legal v Banks | Comm v Ins | Top

Legal v Insurance

Played 17th February 2009, at SJ Berwin, 10 Queen Street Place

Report based on comments by Anthony Kent:

Insurance were quite a bit stronger than Legal on paper.

Mike Wiltshire was first to finish after his opponent misjudged the order in an exchange of pieces and lost a bishop. Paul Barclay lost when he missed that one of his pieces could be taken due to a pin. David Sedgwick had two pawns for a rook with his opponent's king exposed in the centre, but applied continued pressure to win. Ian Reynolds gained revenge for a defeat 47 years ago, gaining the opposition in a king and pawn endgame. Tony Paish was last to finish, with a strong king side attack breaking through against his opponent's French defence.

Banks v Ins | Legal v Comm | Legal v Ins | Banks v Comm | Legal v Banks | Comm v Ins | Top

Banks v Commercial

Played 17th February 2009, at 1 Princes Street

Banks v Ins | Legal v Comm | Legal v Ins | Banks v Comm | Legal v Banks | Comm v Ins | Top

Legal v Banks

Played 10th March 2009, at 10 Queen Street Place

Banks v Ins | Legal v Comm | Legal v Ins | Banks v Comm | Legal v Banks | Comm v Ins | Top

Commercial v Insurance

Played 10th March 2009, at Caxton House, 6-12 Tothill Street, London SW1H 9NA

Report by Mike Wickham

It was a remarkably close match with five of the seven decisive games being decided in quickplay finishes. Anthony's was the last game to finish, a tense struggle in which he made gains on the queen side and successfully resisted Steven Macdonald-Ross' counterplay in the centre. I don't think Anthony saw in the latter stages too much of the other games, so I shall let you have my impressions.

The early results were draws on Boards 8 and 9, a win for Peter Ackley on Board 2 (Ian walked into a pre-analysed sacrificial line in the opening) and a win for Mike Wiltshire to level the score. His opponent, David Gilbert, managed as White to establish a Knight on d6, but could do nothing with it, nor make progress on the Queen's side. Mike Wiltshire had more than equalised by advancing his f pawn to f4 when David in his own words made a fatal blunder. The next game to finish was on Board 1. Ken Norman managed to isolate Julian Farrand's QP and exchanged pieces to reach a R, N and P ending. Julian had a better knight and a space advantage. Neither player could make headway and the game was drawn. 2½-2½!

Two crucial draws followed. On Board 11 William Diffey had repulsed a dangerous but possibly premature attack by Mike Broad and had built up his own pressure down the e- and f-files. Did he miss an opportunity to win somewhere along the line? I'm not sure. At the end Mike had regained a slight though far from decisive initiative, but was a little behind on the clock. So a draw was a fair result. On Board 3, Ian Calvert had been pressing most of the game, first in a middle game in which he exposed John Bass' King, and then in an endgame in which he had a dangerous looking passed pawn and pressure on John's weak King-side squares. John' s valiant defence led to a R and P ending which he certainly wasn't losing when a draw was agreed.

LCCL regained the lead when Andy Waters converted his extra pawn into a winning endgame on Board 7. Four games left. I couldn't see the LCCL winning on Board 4, where at one stage Paul Barasi had 8 minutes on his clock to David Sedgwick's 45 in a quite complex middle game. Despite heroic efforts on Paul's part, reaching a clearly drawn R and P ending, and reducing his time deficit to eight minutes, his flag finally fell. I also feared for Steven Macdonald-Ross, correctly as it turned out. So we had to win on Boards 5 and 6, and win we did. Nigel Fleming converted a slight endgame edge in the form of a space advantage into a winning good N v bad B ending. But from my view, the game of the night was Tony Harvey's. He sacrificed two exchanges and won a couple of vital central pawns to create an irresistible phalanx. Once Tony had regained one exchange, the result seemed inevitable - provided his K position did not allow a perpetual check. And it didn't. So when Martin Page resigned LCCL had reached the winning total of 6½ points.

One curiosity. No Insurance CC player won with the White pieces. All three of its wins were with Black.

MW

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