On Tuesday 04 October, once again we travelled to Bradford, this time to face Keighley. Keighley arrived around 10 minutes late but we were good sportsmen and waited for them to arrive and get settled before starting the clocks, had they been another 10 minutes then maybe we'd have been forced to start due to use needing to get our last train back to Leeds.

Keighley arrived at the Polish Club with only 5 out of 6 men, their captain, Chris Watson said "I think he is coming but we sent him to the wrong venue by accident."! Of course, this is hardly an excuse as the rest of the club obviously knew which venue we were playing from, so why would said person be given the wrong address? Well, we're not going to complain about a head start but it's only fair to contact us if the opposition know that they are going to default!

After 30 minutes, Neil's (Leeds) opponent still hadn't arrived so we deicded to claim the win by default. Neil bought himself a pint, watched the rest of us play for some time and then decided to go home. So 30 minutes into the game, Leeds took a 1-0 lead.

John Light (Leeds) was next  to finish, he beat Chris Watson (Keighley) extremely quickly and confidently so this took us to 2-0. Not long after that, Ian Goater (Keighley) offered Dominic Gallagher (Leeds) a draw, the position was a drawish looking endgame and as we were 2-0 up, Dominic accepted the offer. The score is now 2.5-0.5 to Leeds.

Jon Mahony's (Leeds) game seemed to be pretty level most of the way through and later he managed to force a draw by perpetual against his opponent, Mark Cunningham. A draw is all we needed really as this result took the score to 3-1 to Leeds, only needing a draw from 2 boards now to secure the match victory.

Mark Szymanski (Leeds) had a tough game against Daniel Dufton (Keighley) and managed to draw, securing the match victory.

My result was therefore not important in terms of the match result but it was still an important game for me as an individual result. I fought hard in the opening and managed to gain an advantage with many pieces firing down at the enemy king. I also managed to open lines on the kingside allowing me to feed more pieces into the attack. Unfortunately I dropped a pawn later on and allowed my opponent Richard Zaidman (Keighley) to trade off into an endgame. By this stage I hadn't given up as I knew there were chances to hold so once I reached the time control, I took a breather (away from the board) and returned with a fresh mind, ready to play the king and pawn endgame. We now both started to get low on time but Richard had more with 15 minutes to my 7 or 8. Now at this point, Richard Zaidman decided that it was a good idea to stop recording his moves, despite there being a rule stating that you must record your moves at all times when you have more than 5 minutes on your clock. I asked him on more than one occasion to record and he declined, I was having trouble keeping up by playing and recording my moves as he was simply just moving. The captain, Chris Watson was present and he also didn't seem bothered that Richard wasn't recording his moves. Of course, when there is no arbiter present, then the team captains act as arbiter however, I was the only person on the night acting as arbiter and had no support from the Keighley captain. In the end I lost on time and my opponent had just 20 seconds left, of course had he written his moves down, then he would have been the one losing on time.

Anyway, Leeds Chess Club did the job on the night and won the match 3.5-2.5. We are now on 2 wins from 2 matches in the Bradford League. Keep up the good work lads!