The Columbia Chess Club hosted the Queen City Chess Association as the clubs met across the board for the third time. This was a huge battle with QCCA sending an army of thirteen players and Columbia having a last minute scramble due to cancellations to match the invaders from the north. If you were unable to follow the match on Twitter, here is what happened:
When the battle lines were drawn the substitutions favored the Cola team in avg rating by almost 50 points instead of the less than 10 with the original lineup. Thanks to QCCA for allowing these last minute changes!
The match was very competitive with Cola leading at halftime 7-6. First round winners for Columbia were Keith Eubanks, Paul Farb, Bill Taylor, Adam Shaw, Dan Caiello and Mike Boone with draws from Ben Caiello and Richard Watts. First half winners from QCCA were Alexander Tong, Winfred Gatlin, Suhas Madiraju, Nathan Tong, David Blackwelder with draws from Mike Eberhardinger and Ishaan Maitra.
In the second half QCCA quickly evened the score when Blackwelder posted his second win.
Dan Caiello scored his second win to put Cola back ahead 8-7.
QCCA fought back with wins from Taefi and Blackwell to take the lead 9-8.
Ben Caiello scored a win for Columbia to level the score at 9-9.
Watts (Cola) and Maitra (QCCA) drew for the second time bringing the score to 9.5-9.5 as the tension built.
Patton wins to put Cola out front 10.5 - 9.5.
Gatlin (QCCA) and Robinson (Cola) draw bringing the score to 11 - 10 with five games in progress.
Morton scores a win for Cola to extend the good guys lead to 12-10. Two point lead for Columbia with only four games left.
QCCA fights back again as Gottiparthi and Taylor-Brill both score wins to tie the match at 12-12 with only two games still going.
In a very tense battle Daniel Smith held the advantage over Suhas Madiraju but with the clock ticking down it wasn't clear how to win and with one misstep the attack could fail. Living on delay at 7 seconds the position cleared and after a hesitation brought the clock down to 3 seconds Daniel was able to sack his Queen for Suhas's Knight leaving Daniel up with 3 pawns against a lone King creating a simple win. Suhas played it out to mate hoping for another hesitation to save the half point but Daniel was up to the task and put Columbia ahead 13-12 with only one game left going and it was on Board 1.
Gary Newsom was up a pawn against Keith Eubanks but now with Cola ahead by a point Keith only had to hold the draw while Gary had to win bring his team even. To the kibitzers gathered around it looked like Gary had found a win in a same colored Bishops endgame but Keith saved the half point when Gary was left with a wrong color rook pawn and he couldn't keep Keith's King from blockading the queening square. It looked to be a very instructive endgame since it appeared as if there was a win for Gary hiding somewhere within the 64 squares. Eubanks' ability to save the half point gave Columbia the win 13.5 - 12.5 over Queen City.
Edit: Gary Newsom has posted a report with his endgame in the final game HERE.
This was a very enjoyable afternoon and it was pleasure to have the QCCA visit us again. The QCCA hosts the very successful Reverse Angle series in Charlotte. RA25 will be Jan 14 and will be a great warm up to the Land of the Sky tournament in Asheville Jan 27-29.
A very nice photo album is HERE provided by the Tong family. The rated results are HERE.
The record is now Columbia 2 wins QCCA 0 wins and one draw. We will try to schedule the next match in the spring.
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