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!