Intro Cup Semi Finals - Hastings and St Leonards Chess Club

It was an interesting (and sunny) afternoon at the famous Hastings Chess Club for our Intro Cup Semi Final's match. We had defaulted on board 4, leaving three players: Myself, John and Jim on boards 1 through 3. If we won two of our matches, we could still win, depending on which boards did so.

Jim won his match and John lost. Had I played on (and won) we would have won the semi-finals. My opponent offered a draw and after some consideration, I accepted.

It was a tricky decision for me:

• I felt really hemmed in, in my position,
• I was dying a time death (I had 19 minutes left whilst my opponent had about 47) - my only hope was to move much quicker, leading to more damning mistakes,
• He was rated much higher than me,
• I really didn't think I could turn the game around and better a draw and
• I was absolutely busting for the toilet!
  

Having said that, that didn't stop me agonising over my decision on the way home -- a part of me felt I should have gone for it anyway.

Here is the game for you to play through -- would you have accepted the draw? Ignore the annotations on your first pass through so you aren't biased by Chessmasters cutting remarks ;-)

Play chess online!

Stephen Moon