Friday 29 November 2019

Urmston 3.5 - 2.5 East Cheshire

It's not been a good week for the first team..... A narrow defeat in the Charnley Cup last night at Urmston meant 2 defeats in 3 days.  

Last night started off well, everyone found the place and we won the toss.  We outgraded our opponents but they played above their grades to be fair.

Robert Furness (173)  1/2  Steve Tranter
Steve’s game looked really solid but a draw became inevitable and wise against a strong opponent.

Sajjad Dehghan-Afifi (141)  1 - 0  Geoff
Geoff was up against a rising star - Sajjad beat me 2 years ago when he was graded about 100.  As per Geoff:
"My game was quite good until we both reached time trouble - not my usual comedy of errors. The computer thinks we both played ok. He made some cumulative small errors which gave me a mate in 3 that was fairly obvious away from the board and with a computer friend. Having missed that I still apparently had a winning position (+13 on Stockfish) before my last move. However it was fiendishly complicated and I could not find a way through it. My last move was to place my Queen en prise to a bishop that was lurking on the other side of the board - out of sight. I cannot see the right hand side of the board (where the bishop lurked )due to my eye problem :-! and had succeeded in playing just on the left side of the board until this point. My opponent played very well though - well above his grade and very resourcefully  and fully deserved to win in the end."


Mark Whalley (144)  0 - 1  John
John was back to winning ways:  " My opponent played a philidor set up d6 c6 Qc7 e5 Nd7. Very cramped. Gained loads of space then switched to king side picking up material as his game fell apart."

Jordi Bitlloch (139)  0 - 1  Tom
Tom's impressive debut season continues:  " I had a pretty cramped position out of the opening but managed to trade down into an ending where his advanced pawns were a liability. Won a pawn then marched my passed pawn down the h file for the win."

Mark Davis (115)  1 - 0  David Taylor
As per David: " I lost to  a simple knight fork losing the exchange and becoming subject to an excruciating sequence of pins from his rooks and queen, losing in 41 moves."

Grant Randall (110)  1 - 0  Tudor 
Tudor lost finally after 10.30.  Thanks to the 15 s increments his opponent scrambled out of time trouble and Tudor’s mating threats to scoop up a couple of key pieces.
 
Better luck next time I guess!



Wednesday 27 November 2019

Stockport B 3.5 - 2.5 ECA

We made the trip to the Ladybrook last night protecting our 100% record but just got edged out under the bright floodlights.

Andy Coe (142)  1 - 0  John
This was the last match to finish and as it happened decided the match.  John seemed to be doing OK but unfortunately it petered out into a lost R+P endgame

Gareth Griffiths (142)  0 - 1  Keven
Kev seems to be enjoying playing with black these days and with his swashbuckling French he offered a couple of pawns in return for open files for his heavy pieces to plough in for a nice win.

Jeff Mason (137)  1 - 0  Jim
The in form Jim came across a player who used to be graded much higher and took this right to the wire in a game that could have gone either way.

Peter Taylor (129)  0 - 1  Paul
Against a London system I took the poisoned b pawn early on and managed to withstand a threatening kingside attack before I was able to gain more material and go on to win in a tense game.

Ian Anderson (115)  1/2  Nick
Against the tricky Sniper system Nick was able to equalize and claim a fairly quick draw.

John Kelly (98)  1 - 0  Tudor 
After about half an hour of this game Tudor noticed that his clock was moving but his opponent's wasn't.  This may have unsettled Tudor a bit and wasn't able to find his usual form against an albeit tricky opponent.

So that was our first loss of the season but we're still sitting pretty at the top of the tree going into the Christmas break.