On Saturday, December 17th a total of 13 brave warriors from Charlotte’s Queen City Chess Club trekked south, across the border to the Capital City of Columbia in order to do battle with the best chess talent that city could bring together.
The Queen City Chess Team
Queen City Chess has been organizing team matches since our inception, beginning with the match against the Tidewater (Va) Chess Club back in 2009. We have found that team match chess is a lot of fun and we encourage other chess clubs to get involved.
This was the third match between the two clubs. The first in Columbia was a hard fought affair that found them winning by the slimmest of margins, the second was at the Asian Library in Charlotte. On that occasion, Columbia came in and smashed us. We were in need of a victory, but it wasn’t to be, as we were defeated again by one point in an extremely arduous competition.
The match was hard fought all the way. Columbia gained their one point lead in the first round due to two games that had big turnarounds…first Shouri Gottiparthi, with a dominating position, played a queen sac that was flawed and gave up a point. Then in my game vs Keith Eubanks, I managed to win a piece, only to blunder my queen a couple of moves later.
Round two again proved how evenly matched this event was. David Blackwelder came through with his second win, the only QCC’er to sweep his opponent (game below). As the smoke cleared, two games remained and the match was tied. In one game, Dan Smith of Columbia had a much better position vs Suhas Madiraju, but was very low on time. In the other game, I was a pawn up in a same color bishop endgame vs Eubanks. First, Smith was able to convert his edge and delivered checkmate with 3 seconds on his clock to put Columbia up by one. In the last game, both clocks were getting low, especially mine and with victory just within reach, I “cashed in my chips” by promoting a pawn that compelled a bishop sac by Eubanks only to find that the I had made the win much harder. In fact, I was unable to find the correct way to keep his king out of the corner and my material advantage of bishop and wrong color rook pawn had been stymied. Had I just kept the promotion in hand and moved my king closer to the action, the win would have been trivial. Eubanks saved the draw. Columbia won the match. An exciting finish…at my expense!
It takes a couple of volunteers to make a team match happen. There are many details. The fact that you need to have the exact number of players on each team makes for a logistical challenge. Charlotte’s “hero” for supporting the team match concept is Mike Eberhardinger. Mike works hard for Charlotte area chess. We all owe him a debt of gratitude for everything he does to keep chess alive and thriving in our area. This team match thing has been his “baby” from the start and he does a great job of keeping it rolling. He has set up matches for Queen City Chess with clubs as close as Hickory and as distant as Tidewater Virginia! Thanks Mike for all you do! From the Columbia side, Bob Halliday and Dan Smith did the organizational work. All of these guys deserve a round of virtual applause for their efforts.
If you have not been involved in a team match, I recommend you give it a try. I have now been involved in several; both with Queen City Chess and with our annual NC/SC Border Battle and I think almost everyone who has participated would say that these are some of the most enjoyable chess events on the calender. Give it a try…I’m sure at Queen City Chess we could find a group of players that would provide a competitive match for your club.
Here is David Blackwelder’s second victory of the day, Note the nice finish.