Author: Culcheth Chess Club - Admin

Culcheth had three fixtures last week, testing our player and indeed equipment resources to the limit. Here is how it all went down.

On the 17th October Culcheth took a trip to new WDCL entrants Lymm for a division 3 fixture. Tough games were had with perhaps the highlight fixture being Jonathan Miller’s game below against our much missed former member Bryan Slater, who now plays for Lymm as its closer for him. Jonathan’s commentary on that game below. Notible mentions to Vince who achieved a fine draw against Lymm’s young star Jake Humphreys and Nick Burriss for a good win on board 1.

Just a day later Culcheth had a double header fixture, the A team were at home against last season’s division 2 winners Skelmersdale. Whilst the Richard Furness side also faced Northwich at the same time and date.

This stretched our resources to the extent that two of the old analog clocks had to be dusted down and brought out for use!

The A team were missing a few players meaning that Damian had a decision to make as to whom to bring in on board 5. Should he go for the experienced Nick Burriss? Or a rising star in James Short?

In the end the decision to give Nick the nod seemed to pay off as both Nick and Andy Coe won their games quickly giving us a 2-0 lead. Nick’s game can be played through below.

Damian seemed to have built up an advantage however Gareth Ellis is a tough nut to crack and Gareth managed to hold on for the draw in a position where both players were unable to avoid a perpetual check to their kings.

Paul Stanley from Skelmersdale played a fine game on board 1 against Ian Dutton, the game went deep into a time scramble where both players had rook and 1 pawn left. Paul’s pawn crucially proved further advanced which allowed him to get the win 2.5-1.5

Finally Ilya’s game looked to be headed for a draw but for a most unfortunate bishop blunder likely brought about by the late hour, this mistake prematurely ended the game and resulted in a tied match 2.5-2.5 well done to Skelmersdale!

Finally at the top end of the room the Richard Furness side took on a rather strong looking Northwich side.

James made a better job then Damian did as Black recently against Adrian Breakspeares Colle system, the result was a draw on top board which was an excellent result by James against a strong player.

Dan was outgraded by over 300 points against former League president Richard Betts, he put up a good fight however but Richard emerged triumphant on board 2.

Phil Dawson has been playing excellent chess lately however on this occasion he was to lose against newcomer Liam Whittaker.

Then finally Daniel Anstess in just his second game for us managed an excellent draw on bottom board.

After fielding a far from full strength team in our opening fixture, our A team side had more familiar faces this time around with only Tom Quilter missing from our full strength line up.

Our opposition Winwick have been fighting relegation in the WDCL top tier for the past few seasons, they themselves were missing their regular board 1 Simon Myles.

As the match began Ilya arrived a few minutes late as is customary for him due to having to travel to the match straight from work. Personally after a day at work, playing chess afterwards is something I always struggle to do well, but it did not seem to affect Ilya as he quickly set about gaining the upper hand in his game.

The first result of the night came on the top board where Ian Dutton, playing the second game of his latest ‘comeback’, was against Simeon Sakic. From an offbeat Sicilian Ian stated afterwards that he was not entirely satisfied with the opening position and therefore offered an early draw. This was accepted by Sakic, 0.5 – 0.5

The next two results followed about half an hour later. Ilya on board 5 was facing Ben O’Rourke. From what I saw of the game Ilya managed to obtain a French advanced type pawn structure as Black but without the usual bad light squared Bishop. From such a solid positional foundation he proceeded to outplay his opponent winning a number of pawns and soon after his opponent resigned while still in the middlegame 0.5 – 1.5.

On board three Damian was facing Dave Stuttard. Dave had improved upon his opening from our last encounter but nevertheless I felt that Black had gained a slight advantage after the opening few moves. Dave has a keen eye for a tactic and in the early middlegame he was tempted to try a double piece sacrifice in an attempt to open up Damian’s still uncastled King. Unfortunately for White his position was nowhere near ready for this sacrifice as most of his pieces were still undeveloped. By the time the position below emerged Black had an overwhelming material advantage, Dave played on until Black had re-coordinated and then resigned. 0.5-2.5.

Stuttard V McCarthy after 15.e6+

These results left us just requiring a further half point to secure the match.

On board 2 we had Marek as White against Richard Clissold and on board 4 Rob Furness also had the White pieces against Ken Johnson.

These last two boards went on well past ten o clock, Marek seemed under some pressure in the dynamic position in the image below.

Robert’s game looked like a typical example of the pressure the English opening can apply as after winning the A file for is Rook and Queen Rob began probing for a weakness. In response Black needs to really have kingside attacking chances in his favour, but Ken’s attack seemed to be a long way behind.

As both games neared their conclusion Marek’s game seemed to have taken a turn for the worse. Clissold had managed to win a pawn and force off the exchange of all the heavy pieces. For a brief moment in the position below watching I wondered if Marek could even win with Bxf6!?

Bxf6 played in the game…

and indeed after Bxf6 it would have been good enough for the win if Clissold responded with Kxf6… When after Kd7 White will be the one promoting the e pawn.

However seeing the danger Clissold instead played the calm Kxe6 which gave Black a winning advantage as White was then unable to stop one of the black pawns from promoting…

Unfortunately it seems there is no defending this endgame for White.

Whether or not Rob was fully aware of Marek’s predicament on board 2 I am not sure, however he was undoubtably slightly better but Ken had stoically defended his pawn weaknesses to the point that Rob now had under two minutes on his clock. Given the new WDCL adopted time controls this is not quite the dire situation that it was of previous seasons (we now get a 10 second increment per move) to the relief of his Captain Rob offered the draw which when accepted by Ken got us over the line for the win.

Marek resigned his position shortly after this to give us a narrow win of 3-2

A very early league table

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.