Apologies are in order to the followers of this blog for the lack of an update after recent matches. A combination of one contributor being overseas and another’s laptop being out of commission was the reason for no reports being published of late. Now that I have a working laptop again hopefully normal service will now be resumed!
When we left things the A team had just been held to a draw by Division 1 newcomers Skelmersdale…
The following Wednesday it was our B team’s turn to welcome Skelmersdale, this time the away team left with all the points. Despite a fine effort by Keith Maudsley who played an excellent game against Paul Massey’s Colle system. Keith has kindly annotated this one which can be enjoyed below:
Over the past half dozen or so years the key fixture in the WDCL calendar has been the clash between Culcheth A and Atherton. The sides met for the first time this season on 7th November.
A slightly nervy match ensued with both sides likely aware of the importance of the fixture. The top three boards each played out to a draw leaving boards 4 and 5 to decide the result. On this occasion Andy Coe and Ilya Dubov both played excellent games which gave us the match win. I did take a picture of both of their scoresheets with the intention to publish these games here. Sadly however I seem to have managed to delete this from my phone over the past few weeks! Ilya / Andy if you would still like these games to be published perhaps you can provide me with a copy of your scoresheets and I can later add these wins into an updated version of this blog post!
This takes us up to more recent times where on the 15th November we had two home fixtures Culcheth A V Northwich A in division 1, whilst at the same time welcoming WDCL newcomers Eccles for their first visit to our club in Culcheth C V Eccles in WDCL division 3.
Our A team established a quick decisive 3-0 lead from boards 3, 4 and 5 which earned us an early victory in this fixture. Northwich were missing a few players meaning some of their less experienced players had been thrown in lower down. The top two boards were hotly contested however. Ian Dutton played a fine game against the talented James Harrison, James was not to know that he had played into a position Ian was having for the third time in a month! This allowed Ian to emerge with a good opening and he went onto convert.
Damian’s game against Richard was a close affair where in the end Richard was to lose on time, in a complicated but not necessarily worse endgame.
Boards 1 & 2 from the Culcheth V Northwich fixture
On the same evening Eccles edged a close match against our C team 1.5-3.5. Phil Dawson has kindly provided his game which was our only win from this match.
