1st round of the Munich Team Championship
The round began with the third team in Neuperlach. Since Robert, Janus and Dominik couldn’t make it, we lined up with only five boards. Other players still have to be added to this team. All in all it was a successful outing, since everyone except Niklas won their games. Congratulations to the team, which had turned the deficit into a 4-2. Unfortunately the line-up had not been correct; the last three boards were annulled and scored for Neuperlach. Experience gathered, next time it won’t happen to us again. The fourth team played against the nominally better-staffed second team of the Forstenried club. Here there was a surprise win by Florian against Markus and a deserved draw by Vedarth against Shang. After today’s analysis there was even more in it; Vedarth will be able to win such games in the future. The other boards, apart from Jacob’s, who got a draw, were all lost. So here we lost 2-4.
The most important match, from the first team, took place under unfavourable circumstances. The team was not complete, as Blaz had withdrawn for urgent family reasons and Javier had woken up with a fever and cough. The absence list was completed by Alexander, who was on a business trip, by Tugrul and Vroni, who were at the squad training course in Vorra, by Manfred, who had already started his holiday, by Herbert, who was out due to illness, and so on. So we could still rearrange things such that we had White at least four times against Bayern6. Christoph slid up to three and we left the second board empty. When I arrived, we had already levelled it; it stood 2.5 to 2.5. Christoph and Ardian took the wins and Volker the draw. Unfortunately Matvei lost. Stephan was in a rook endgame, which according to him suits him particularly well, as was later to be confirmed. So we increased it to 3.5 to 2.5. Now we were just half a point short of a surprise draw. On board 1 played Julio against IM Schenk and on board 8 Julia against Marcus. Marcus was able to promote; the white rook’s pawn was on the second-to-last rank, protected by the king. A mating combination escaped him, so with the draw he secured the tie. Now the last hopes rested on Julio, who played unexpectedly strongly and had transitioned into an endgame of knight against rook. Andreas prevailed with his experience. In the end we are fully satisfied with the fighting performance of our team; the willingness to sacrifice themselves for the team showed in the length of the games. The other Bayern teams had long since finished; we demanded the most of the 6th Bayern team. With this performance we can keep up well in this league.