In the Penultimate game before Christmas our A team faced St Helens. We had managed to take an early lead so far in the Division 1 league table, this has been quite surprising to me as we have been without a good handful of the key players from previous seasons.
Going into this fixture St Helens sat 2 points behind us, meaning that a drawn match would see us tied at the top.
The match began 15 minutes later then the usual start time, no complaints from us as this suited Ilya who as ever was racing to get to the game straight from work and therefore on this occasion did without his usual 10 minute starting deficit. Ilya was up against Barry Groves, to Ilya’s surprise Barry bashed out 1.g4?! which has a reputation of being the very worst opening move one can play! “The Grob” as it is known is not without some venom for the unwary opponent, however on this occasion Barry’s neglect of traditional opening principles was to cost him dear as Ilya went on to win quickly with a powerful kingside attack. 0-1
Ian Dutton on board 1 had been expecting to face Mark Ellis, Mark however had apparently been a late drop out so therefore Steve Potter was Ian’s opponent on board one. Steve played his usual Black set up with an early Bishop on the long diagonal whilst Ian took control of the central squares and had a pretty position.
From the above diagram, Black decided to embark on a plan to distract the White bishop from its defence of e4 with …,Na5? Followed by c4 and Nb3.
the pawn on b3 is now a goner
Generally a strong centre in chess beats play on the wing and this proved to be the case here as Ian sidestepped Black’s idea and went on to win the loose pawn on b3. Steve now a pawn down with the worse position played on but Ian converted comfortably 0-2
The final moments of Dutton V Potter
On board 2 Damian was facing Phoenix Lamb for the first time since last season when Phoenix won a tremendous calculative game. This time around Damian was more on his guard having underestimated his opponent last time. A more positional game ensued which probably suited Damian a bit more, finally after a fair bit of manoeuvring Black managed to gain a won pawn ending. 0-3
Phoenix resigned here as Black’s King is going to invade
This left Rob and Nick to finish the match with the result already decided.
Rob looked to be playing a terrific game but perhaps lacking a bit of confidence from some tough results lately he made a mistake which allowed his opponent to gain a perpetual check. 0.5-3.5
This left Nick to finish off against another St Helens youngster Jake Money. We were grateful to Nick for playing this fixture at the last moment as Marek was a late drop out. This game looked extremely close throughout and the players agreed a fair draw in a fairly level rook and pawn ending. 1-4
