Ormskirk A V Culcheth A

Match report 21/10/2019

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Ormskirk A	V	Culcheth A
1.Mike McGreal	0.5-0.5	Iain Johnson
2.Andrew Hawkins	0-1	Damian McCarthy
3.Robert Owens	0-1	Tom Vout
4.Vaughan Wall	0-1	Keith Maudsley
5.David Tomkins	0-1	Andy Coe
6.Anthony Wells	0-1	Nick Burriss
Final Score	0.5-5.5	Culcheth White bds 1,3 & 5

The usual high standard of match report is absent for this one as Jonathan was missing for this game so I will provide a few brief insights.

Due to various commitments we were without three of our top four players for the long trek north away to Ormskirk. Tom was down as stand in captain but was running late so Iain stepped into the reigns.

Andy Coe quickily dispatched his opponent to maintain his 100% record in the league this season. I didn’t see any of this game but was very pleased Andy got a game after two of his previous league opponents had failed to turn up!

I finished next, my opponent played a Closed Sicilian as white. I played a system with an early b5, my opponent tried to exploit this by playing e5. After a brief skirmish I felt I was a comfortable pawn up and in for an easy game. Then however on move 18 my opponent played a tricky move Ng5, it was one of those moves that while I was sure I still had a good position but if I was not careful the position could turn and I could even end up getting mated. I found this evaluation swing quite hard to deal with at the board and proceeded to spend 40 minutes (far far too long) coming to terms with it… It didn’t help that during most of this time some old guy at the bar a couple of meters from the board, decided to hold a very loud conversation with no concerns about there being a chess match going around him… not ideal when you need to calculate a long line which if your miss one move in it you will be lost… in the end I gave up on it and played a safer move returning the pawn, soon after the game calmed down my opponent went wrong again and the team were 2-0 up.

Keith’s game is at the bottom of the page, it was a Botvinnik English system where it seemed like White had some lively play early on in the game but Keith managed to calm the game down and then finished the game off with some neat calculation at the end of the game.

Tom looked to have the most comfortable evening of all of us and the fact that his game was not one of the first to finish was mainly down to the fact that his opponent played on right down to the end against an overwhelming material deficit as is his right of course.

Iain’s game on top board was quite lively, as my game finished I noticed Iain dip below 5 minutes in what still seemed a complicated position, I took over recording and so had a good view of this game. Despite Iain being a bit better McGreal is a tough nut to crack and he put up good defence. In the end time pressure took its toll and Iain missed a defensive idea which forced K+R v K+R and the players agreed a draw.

Finally Nick’s game, I didn’t see much of this but by the time I came over Nick had two extra pawns in a rook ending which he seemed to convert without any problems. The only potential pitfall again was the clock but he managed to navigate this ending comfortably.

Next up will be two fixtures (one in the cup then one in the league) against our old rivals Atherton who were the last team to deny us the league title two years ago.

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