Last Saturday saw Sussex matched against Kent in the County Open competition. Despite being outgraded by 11 points per board, Sussex put up a good fight. They took an early lead by racking up a series of wins on the lower boards, but were gradually pegged back as Kent’s superior firepower on the higher boards started to tell. The final result of the match is still undecided, as the top board game finished in controversial circumstances. The score was 7.5-7.5 on boards 2 to 16. In the board one game, in a position where his opponent Neil McDonald has just been left with Rook and Knight against his Rook, Feliks Kwiatkowski immediately claimed a draw with 6 seconds left on his clock. The consensus even among Sussex players seemed to be that his claim was unlikely to be upheld, but we will have to wait for the official decision.
In my game, I faced Ian Snape on board four. As in our two previous White games, the game headed into one of the main lines of the King’s Indian, but unlike those two games I played far more steadily, and in the end I was the one pressing for the win, albeit with slim chances of success. In the end I had to be satisfied with a draw against a highly-rated opponent.
Fittingly for a match played at Horsham, the contingent of Horsham players in the team made a good contribution to the overall score, with Anthony Higgs, Paul Taylor, Dix Roberts and John Cannon winning, and Brian Donnelly and I drawing, for a total of 5 out of 6 points, which was two thirds of the Sussex total!
I give my game against Ian Snape below with some notes.