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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:
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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