The first league game of the year started with a win against University College Dublin in our home match. It was the 6th round of the league, our team scored 5.5-2.5 winning the match by a good margin. It was an interesting match, the last game went up to 4.5 hours of play which was exciting to watch.
I didn’t get a chance to look at my teammate’s games closely, here are some interesting moments from our games.
I think I found a nice plan with b2-b3 followed by a2-a3 and pushing my pawn to b4. In the end, my opponent overlooked his backrank weakness.
Coming to Tarun’s game he had a long and intense battle, both players were in a serious time scramble towards the end of the game.
It was unique to see our names in the train! I have traveled in trains in Europe but I didn’t see something like this before.
We have five more rounds to go in the Armstrong league for this season, it is exciting to see which team will finish on the top of the leaderboard. Dublin chess club last won the Armstrong in 1981, that was a very long time ago! We will keep giving our best and see how it goes. Our next match is against Gonzaga B next month.
Next up is the Gonzaga Masters this weekend in Dublin where Tarun is the third seed in the tournament, strong event coming up looking forward to it.