Author: Culcheth Chess Club - Admin

Board 1- Dutton V Stanley

Traditionally the month of December is a restful month in the WDCL calendar as the teams wind down towards a Christmas break. Not so this year! Possibly due to a welcome addition of Lymm and Eccles chess club to the league there are extra fixtures to fulfil. Therefore the A team players found themselves in action for the 2nd December Wednesday in a row.

Football league titles are often won not just in the big matches but also by the top sides grinding out results against smaller but well drilled teams. The analogy was not lost on me as we were making our way to Skelmersdale on what was an extremely cold and drizzly evening.

We had a slightly changed line up from last week, Marek Mazek and Andy Coe coming back into the side in place of Robert Furness and Nick Burriss.

The first result of the evening came on board 5, Andy Coe having beaten his opponent Dave Stanfield when they last met, repeated the same opening line. Stanfield however admitted to me afterwards that he had in fact studied the position since then and this time was well prepared as he fairly quickly brought home the first point for Skelmersdale 1-0.

Despite the early set back things were looking fairly promising I thought in the early stages of all the other boards.

Marek Mazek has only played one League game from six so far this season so his return for this fixture was most welcome. In his usual fast attacking style Marek was to level the scores, proving to be just too strong for his opponent Mike McGreal on this occasion. 1-1

On board 3 Damian was up against Gareth Ellis for the second time this season. Previously Gareth had held Damian to a draw in a solid French Rubenstein this time therefore Damian decided to play a different first move as White. Early on Gareth was playing just as solidly as the last meeting managing to trade off a pair of Bishops. Damian then decided to expand in the centre anyway, in the hope of unbalancing the game. An interesting middlegame was reached with White having a big centre but made up of a pair of hanging pawns on d4 & e4. Gareth tried to exploit this by attacking the pawns but eventually a White knight landed on f5 and Black’s king was opened up, forcing resignation 1-2.

In the above picture, Ilya is 3 pawns ahead with passed G and H pawns. With such a good position it can be all too tempting to relax thinking nothing can go wrong. This can be a dangerous mindset though in chess, and thus proved to be the case when Ilya now winning a 4th pawn to reach 2 Rooks & 5 pawns v 2 Rooks and 1 pawn was despite the huge material advantage suddenly lost! Massey had skilfully executed the swindle by first of all doubling rooks on the 7th rank and then marching his king into Ilya’s castled position. Ilya sadly did not sense the danger fast enough and the position below could not be saved… chess can be a cruel game at times… 2-2

Therefore the match was to once again go down to the wire, as it did earlier in the season. Ian’s opponent Paul Stanley had played an early gambit line from which Ian had obtained an excellent position in response. As the players entered the middlegame however Ian’s early activity around the Black king had died down somewhat with a tense endgame being reached.

The key moment came in the below position…

In the above position whilst under severe time pressure Paul decided to try Ne3 possibly on the expectation of something like 1.Nxe3, fxe3, 2.Kxe3 when Black can play Nxe5. White of course does not have to capture twice and the game went 1.Bxe3, fxe3 2.Re1! With the plan of picking up the pawn with the Rook. After this Black’s weak pawns started to drop leaving Paul in the end with a lost Rook and 3 pawns V Rook and 1 pawn endgame. Once Ian forced off the final pair of Rook’s Black resigned. 3-2

What a tough match! Thanks to everyone involved, we now do have a bit of a gap until the next fixture in January. Happy Christmas to all readers!

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

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.