Three hundred and 34 years before Christ, Alexander the Great stormed into Asia Minor and began a series of conquests that would result in the defeat of the mighty Persian Empire.
Last night, the heroes of Battersea’s U125 chess team did something similar – although not in Asia Minor, but the London League Minor, otherwise known as division 6.
Our boys dished out the kind of thrashing not seen since Alexander’s Battle of Gaugamela as Athenaeum, that great classical club, were thrown to the lions.
That is not to say Athenaeum didn’t fight hard – they did. But Battersea had the advantage of starting 1-0 up after the home side’s board 3 defaulted, unfortunately leaving Darius Zutautas having to wait for his debut.
The first completed game then was on board 1, where I ended up transposing my French into a bastardised Sicilian of some form and completely misplaying the opening.
However, I still went on to convert. My opponent sent his queen wandering on the kingside and I was able to destroy his position with an f5 break and then box in the piece to win the game.
It left us 2-0 up and needing just a half-point to keep up the pressure on the top two in the division 6 table.
But we weren’t going to settle for that.
Newboy Gareth Williams polished off his first game on board soon after. Almost all the pawns survived into the endgame when Gareth and his opponent were left with a rook each.
But crucially Gareth had control of open a-file and took full advantage, ramping up the pressure until his opponent’s position collapsed. It was an impressive debut.
Finally, with the match won, Joel Morales was left to battle it out in the tightest game of the lot.
Joel had smashed through his opponent’s defences with a characteristic rook-sac earlier in the game, and at one point had all his pieces attacking.
But his opponent, the opposition captain, steadied the ship and Joel was left the exchange down in the endgame but with one extra pawn.
Here is the position Joel found himself in, white to move:
Joel played Bg7 – which surprised me, and also it seems his opponent who then made two mistakes before resigning. It was a harsh way to lose a close match, but Joel wasn’t complaining.
It left Battersea MI 4-0 victors and still third in the London League division 6 table behind Hackney Gorki and Morley College. Both those teams have a perfect 4/4 record so we need their results in the remaining matches to go our way.
This team’s next match is against DHSS on February 27.
