One of the strongest local league matches ever took place on the 1st of December. Gary O’Grady’s team, the Drunken Knights – Surrey Branch took on the almighty Sandhurst team.

Myself and a number of other spectators took a trip down to the Star pub in Godalming to see how things would turn out (of course this did include sampling some of the Belgium beer on offer!).

The board order was as follows:

Sandhurst – Drunken Knights

1: Peter Wells – Stephen Gordon

2: Nick Pert – Keith Arkell

3: Gavin Wall – Danny Gormally

4: Thomas Rendle – Simon Ansell

5: Mark Josse – Blair Connell

What a line up!

The interesting thing was to see how both sides prepared for the match. As this did seem to differ somewhat…

I meet most of the Drunken Knights at 4pm and they were in full flow…

Some rather chaotic 3 min exchange chess was going on and there was already an impressive line up of empty pint glasses scattered across the table.

This has to be expected when it comes to the Drunken Knights. There is a reason they are given this name, and membership to their club should really only be open to adults over the age of 18 or maybe even 21. Rather like a bikers gang.

I had forgotten how much fun exchange chess can be, especially with a good group of friends. The last time I may have played it was around about 18 years ago, so very entertaining.

Sandhurst took a more serious approach and most of the players refrained from hitting the juice until after or half way through their games.

I am amazed that some of the players could even see properly, let alone play, this may have been one of the reasons for a quick draw on board 5.

Anyway lets have a quick talk about the match.

Board 1: Peter drew with Stevie G, it seemed that Peter had an edge but got rather short of time and agreed a draw.

Board 2: Was a amazing affair with Keith sacrificing his queen, rook, bishop, knight and 3 pawns to chase Nick’s king around the board. The game ended in a draw with perpetual check from one of Keith’s pawns, which has never been seen in chess before…

Actually the game was a draw but the queens were exchanged off quickly and the endgame seemed to offer both sides little chances of gaining the full point.

Board 3: Danny seemed to have an edge but Gavin defended well and held the draw.

Board 4: Our webmaster Simon Ansell tried out d4 which has become a favourite of his recently but came face to face with the Dutch Defence, and Thomas skilfully managed to win. This was the only decisive result which was a bit harsh on Si, but that is the reality of team chess.

Board 5: Saw, Blair ‘Hoody’ Connell lost in deep thought against the quickly improving Mark Josse. Mark has taken a big break from chess but he is clearly a talented player and he may have gained a slight advantage but decided to take a draw against the higher rated opponent.

So very close and very exciting. Both captains, Gary O’Grady and Alec must be congratulated for getting such strong teams together, this can only be good for chess.

It is good to see a bunch of professional players getting together, playing chess and enjoying themselves.

It seems that nowadays a lot of professionals are being penalised for being so strong!

I will give an example of this, I used to play in Sandhurst’s 1st team but after a number of complaints that the team was too strong I was slowly pushed out of the team.

I am currently Captain of the 2nd team.

At least Gary has made a positive move by offering a challenge to Sandhurst.

Instead of moaning and bitching, Gary has stepped up to the challenge. This is how strong leagues come about in the first place. Without this there would be no French League, Bundesliga, Spanish League, 4NCL etc.

It should not be the case that when a player becomes so strong they are then subjected to attacks from weaker players because they are strong, ridiculous.

Without strong players chess would lose a lot of its attraction. Who would juniors look up too? Who would inspire juniors to keep playing rather than giving up when they reach 12? (just look at the effect the Kasparov-Short match had on schools around the country), Who would write chess books? (would you buy a book written by a 100 ECF grade? etc. etc.

Anyway Alec looked extremely happy with the result and so he should be. Sandhurst were out graded on most boards but still performed very well. Gary obviously did not put out a strong enough team, lets hope he can get some 2600 next time. Or maybe the result could just be down to his bad captaincy (only joking Gary!).

Anyway lets hope the event is at least an annual thing, I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

I should just mention some of the other people who made an appearance.

This list included, Aly, Lisa, Clive (Chilli Pepper Films), Justin (Chilli Pepper Films), Alec (the man behind Sandhurst, who must be thanked for the all the hard work he has done), Simon M, Neville Chan (in charge of The Drunken Knights, London Branch) and Peter Ackley. I am sure that I missed some other people out, so apologies to them.

All in all a very good night out, I just have a rather sore head at the moment!

P.S. Let’s have a spot the caption competition. All comments sent in here please!