The A team faced defending league champions Atherton for the second time this season knowing that a win would but us two points clear at the top with a game in hand. We had a strong lineup for this one with all of our main players being avaliable.
Atheron also had a strong line up which was shown by the fact that their bottom board Paul Doherty had just recently finished in 1st place in the Blackpool Major.
As usual most of the games we’re very close during the early stages, Furness V Doherty on board 5 and Smith V Mulleady on 3 had a similar symmetrical English pawn structure with pawns on e4 and c4 for white and e5, c5 for Black.
Board 5 was the first to finish as Robert agreed to an early draw against Doherty 0.5-0.5
On board 3 Jonathan’s position began to deteriorate, I didn’t get to see the finer details but I wondered if one factor may have been that White’s Knight on f3 impeded the f-pawn wheras Mulleady’s was free to be pushed. Usually the knight’s are better on e2 / e7 in that Botvinnik type structure. Resignation came for White in the early middlegame as the opposition captain gave Atherton the lead. 1.5-0.5
On board 4 Damian equalized early on in the Black side of an Alapin Sicilian, Lythgoe headed for early exchanges and offered several draws. Unfortunately for Damian he overpressed in a position where he thought he had a winning move but miscounted and it turned out it was Black who was queening first! Ironically the game was probably still technically a draw when Damian resigned in disgust with himself. 2.5-0.5
Lythgoe V McCarthy (bigger screen)
This left the top two boards to try and salvage something from the fixture. On board two Marek was facing Lee Kay as Black. Marek adopted a Stonewall setup against Kay’s Catalan opening. After a balanced Kay managed to turn his weak backward pawn on c3 into a strength on c5, Marek gave up his Bishop to try to create counterplay against White’s King but there was to be no compensation for the loss of the Bishop. 3.5-0.5
On top board Tom Quilter was up against Ethan Norris. Tom adopted an aggressive setup against his opponent’s Najdorf. Ethan defended accurately when a very small oversight from Tom resulted in a dramatic shift in the game as Black’s d6 pawn began to run down the board.
In a worse position after this Tom did everything possible to create complications but Ethan held firm to bring home the point for Atherton. 4.5-0.5
