Bournemouth School Old Boys - 2012
The long-trailed event finally arrived - at 11pm on Friday, after the first round of the Bournemouth Grand Congress http://www.bournemouthchesscongress.org.uk. Given the late hour, the time control was G15 - an increment would have been nice, but the clocks weren't up to it.
The 80s Boys were missing Ben Hirsch who, at 179 ECF four years ago, would have been on board three. The Boys of '79 were at full strength, although even so were heavily outgraded - pointing to a 3.5-1.5 result...
...which proved to be optimistic. The 5-0 whitewash broke down as follows:
Board 1 - Mark Potter had the most predictable loss - against Bruce Jenks, 206 ECF and therefore just outside the top 100 English players.
Board 2 - Darren Wimbleton suffered the quickest loss - against Martin Simons.
Board 3 - I lost the shortest game, see below - to Andy Heard.
Board 4 - Richard Sutton lost to Tony Pritchard, in the biggest upset
Board 5 - Alan Graham was the unluckiest - losing on time to Mike Pownall in a winning position.
It was great to see everyone again, the gap being 26 years in some cases. What made it different from, say, a rugby reunion 25 years on, was that we played chess - and continue to play chess. We are therefore creating new history to talk about when we next meet. This is not a fossil.
So, here's my loss. Was it worth Andy waiting 27 years for this revenge? Perhaps - it was brutal and short.
See http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150664559502791.382795.570982790&type=1&l=e173a20cc9 for more pictures.