St. Helens v Culcheth Peninsular Cup Team 2 (Culcheth C)
6 September 2023 – VICTORY AGAINST THE ODDS
The evening got off to a slightly confrontational start even before a pawn was pushed.
A week before this match I had written to St. Helens giving them details of our team and the fact that it was primarily made up of our C Team (Division 3) players – and all players were eligible for C Team matches.
The point was to agree what level of handicap (if any) was appropriate to the match. Having received no reply I raised the matter with the St. Helens captain who acknowledged that he had read my note, but was insistent that any Culcheth 2nd Team was a Division 1 team because we had 2 teams in Division 1. Intuitively this did not seem fair to me, even less so when he said that the matter should have been agreed in advance – which, if he had bothered to reply to my note, it could have been. The WDCL rules are not clear on this and rather than prolong any argument I decided to go ahead and play on the basis of no handicap and let our playing do the talking – which, of course, it did!
–Edit- The handicap issue that Nick raises in the report was infact previously raised asked and answered last season by the WDCL League Manager when it was agreed that our 2nd Peninsular cup team represents our C team and therefore does gain the 2 division handicap head start for this competition.
We were outgraded by an average of approximately 200 points per board and did not get off to the best of starts as Alex Robinson on Board 1 was first to finish having resigned against Steve Potter.
However, Jonathan Miller evened things up with a superb win on Board 3 in just 23 moves against Barry Groves who got himself into an uncharacteristic tangle in a Modern Defence opening. (annotated by JM below)
Unfortunately Dan Robinson lost his Board 4 encounter with Keith Lyon, whilst Nick Cooke dug deep to clinch a draw against Ray Smith on Board 5.
So with 4 games completed we were 2.5 – 1.5 down and needing to win both remaining games to go through to the next round.
On board 6 Phil Dawson played with immense composure and a high level of accuracy with the Black pieces in a Caro-Kann Defence eventually winning by resignation on move 42.
So that just left me to win with the Black pieces against Phoenix Lamb on Board 2. In a slightly off-beat Sicilian Defence I secured equality in the opening and having exploited a couple of his errors I had a clear initiative in the middlegame. A serious error on his part gifted me a pawn and his King was comparatively unsafe. Having played with a high degree of accuracy I blundered horribly on move 35 and should have lost a piece with just 2 pawns for compensation but on move 38 White let me off the hook and overlooked a mate in one on his very next move. 3.5-2.5 (6 – 2.5) after 2 division handicap applied, and ‘job done’, but we really do need to resolve the handicap issue before our next Peninsular Cup match.
Meanwhile….
Two days earlier our A team took on Northwich in their opening Peninsular Cup fixture. Unfortunately captain Damian had only managed to recruit 4 of the 6 required players for this fixture. Several of our usual A & B team players couldn’t play and I was not able to call upon C team players as they were cup tied to the Wednesday game.
Below for Rob’s excellent win against promising Northwich youngster Ingmar So
In the end the starting deficit proved insurmountable as Northwich managed to halve the remaining two boards to send our A team crashing out of this year’s cup.
