In the lovely weather, Gawain decided to walk over for his London League game on the 27th of April against Kings Head. He was a bit sore all over due to us visiting our friends FM Manuel Weeks and his lovely girlfriend Brigitta Holland as well as GM Stuart Conquest the day before where we proceeded to play a couple of hours of tennis before conquering “Absolute Combat”. I myself, thought why not try it out as I had played Laser Tag (completely different fyi) in New Zealand with my dad and brother. We played 5 different scenarios in a 2 on 2 battle and we came out victorious just edging Manuel and Brigitta at the end. This game is a lot about strategy and at first I was running around like a headless chicken and couldn’t really communicate with Gawain (lots of “Ga – where are you?”) but he was crouching down, aiming and firing hence the sore knee. If you ever want to try it, I highly recommend it as a fun activity and definitely something for the competitive.
So onto the chess – Gawain won his game with white against Simon Spivack (218) in an interesting e4 e5, which turned into a sort of Old Indian position, without light squared bishops which should favour White as the …f5 break is harder to achieve with e6 becoming vulnerable. He slowly increased the pressure and managed to go into an endgame with two rooks, knight and pawn against rook, two knights and two pawns. Unsure whether exchanging would leave a technical win, Gawain managed to sacrifice his remaining pawn to set up a mating net. The team are 6.5-4.5 up with one adjourned game. The final match of the season is the powerhouse Wood Green who fielded 10GMs in their last match!