Many thanks again to Robert who has recently uncovered documents dating back to the very founding of our chess club. Shortly before Christmas we published a copy of Richard Furness’s first and second club bulletin’s.
Below we bring you seasons 3 and 4 of Culcheth Chess club’s foundation. Hopefully it may bring back some fond memories to long time WDCL players.
I will keep a link to these posts inside a page titled ‘history’ at the top of this blog from now on.
Culcheth A v Culcheth B
On 6 March this very local Division 1 derby took place. The A Team were without several of their regular players but the B Team was, by contrast, oversubscribed. So one of the B Team’s stronger players, Andy Coe, was loaned to the A Team ensuring that they out-graded the B Team on four of the 5 boards.
The first game to finish was my Board 4 encounter with Bryan Slater, who had spectacularly won his two most recent league games and was clearly in great form. By contrast I had won only 2 of my 10 games this season, albeit most of them had been against players graded significantly higher than me. But chess is a great leveller and having lost one pawn, followed swiftly by the loss of another Bryan conceded.
On Board 2 Ilya Dubov was playing Black against Keith Maudsley and opted for his favourite Caro Kann Defence. Ilya has had a terrific first season with the club and also at Blackpool, but Keith is an immensely experienced, resilient and resourceful player. Perhaps it was no surprise that this encounter ended in a draw.
The B Team was assured of at least a share of the match spoils when Nick Cooke overcame Dan Robinson in a see-saw encounter on Board 5.
Victory for The Mighty Bees was achieved in a thrilling game on Board 3 in which Jonathan Miller built a winning advantage against Andy Coe only to dissipate it in time trouble. But for his slips on moves 53 and 54 the winning margin would have been even greater.
Last, and by no means least, was the game on the top board between Tom Vout and Damian McCarthy. (This game is unannotated as of yet may come later! My only comment would be that it was a classic case of “Too many Rooks spoiling the broth”)
Apologies for the tardiness of this long overdue update.
On 28th February our A team travelled over to league leaders and defending champions Atherton in what would likely be the title decider.
In our previous meeting it had been Atherton who emerged the victors by a single board, since then however we had boasted a perfect record and Atherton had conceeded one drawn match against Northwich. Hence going into this fixture we trailed then by a single point so the title was still in our own hands.
The first result of the evening came on top board where I myself (Damian) was up against Martyn Hamer. I adopted a belt and braces approach to this game conscious of being severely outrated I figured a draw would be a decent team result. Martyn offered this after a very brief skermish from the opening where for a moment I thought I might be better, but he easily parried my Ng5 idea.
0.5-0.5
Robert Furness was up against Tim Hilton on board two, this game also reached a peaceful conclusion shortly after the opening.
1-1
The remaining games were more dramatic and my only regret is I failed to obtain scoresheets afterwards from the players. If any of you have them to hand still I can perhaps add them to this post later?
Tom Vout was up against Bob Newton, from what I saw of the game it seemed to me that Tom might have been slightly worse for a phase but then suddenly he obtained attacking chances against Bobs King and Bob was forced to return material to stay in the game. If you look at the image below you can see Tom with his Knight wedged in on f6 and Bob looking rather uncomfortable! In the end Tom took a perpetual and the game ended in another draw.
1.5-1.5
Tom Vout V Bob Newton
On board 5 Andy Coe played a fine game and was up a pawn, his opponent how ever put up stubborn resistance. In the end the clock became a factor and with under a minute left in which to convert Andy’s game resulted in nother draw.
2-2
The final game to finish was on board 4, where Keith Maudsley was making his welcome return to chess after a long absence due to the pandemic. He was in for no easy task up against oposition captain Lee Kay. Lee’s rating must have taken a minor blip last season because in previous years he would likely have been on at least board 2 in this Atherton line up, therefore Keith’s task was even harder. Nevertheless Keith took the game right to the bitter end and as the lat game to finish Atherton finally got over the line to win the match 3-2.
Thanks to all that were involved and congratulations to Atherton whom barring something dramatic happening will be well deserved 2021/22 WDCL champions.
