Last night I made my début for the Drunken Knights in the Surrey Border League. I actually played a couple of rapid games for them last year while I was filming the Killer Grand Prix DVD. Be sure to check out Simon’s website; his recent releases are here while to purchase the one I did for gingergm then click here.
The Drunken Knights team is run by Gary O’Grady, and he does his best to combine a team challenging for the league with a very good social side. I was unfortunately unable to make the first game of the season but they did well without me defeating Farnham in a close match. This time we faced Guildford A and I played the Spanish FM Alberto Suarez Real. He played the Scotch against me and we quickly went into an endgame. I won’t bother showing you the game here as it was rather dull but he used up a lot of time coming up with a plan and I managed to convert the win. Unfortunately Simon went down on board two, playing quickly in his opponent’s time trouble backfired, but with wins on the bottom two boards we sealed victory. Here’s the scorecard.
We play our home games at the Rose and Crown pub in Godalming. The match started at 7.30pm and the last good train to get home is 10.29pm. Nevil, who also lives in London and in fact runs the Drunken Knights team that play in the London League, ran to the station to see the train waiting on the platform. We had to go down through the underpass to the platform but after racing through that and up the stairs all was good – the train was still there. Unfortunately the doors had closed and no matter how many buttons we tried we couldn’t persuade them to open up again. Sadly we watched the train chug out of the station.
Back to the pub and another pint. At least it meant we could play some blitz and Gary very kindly gave us a lift back to London at a round trip of a couple of hours. I suppose Gary is used to travelling with his company Blackthorne Transport but even so a very kind gesture and saved us getting back in the early hours on a night bus!