Culcheth Chess Club Blog

‘A Team’ Dominate the Local Derby by B Team Captain Nick Burriss

Significantly out-graded on all 5 boards, the B Team suffered a heavy 4.5 – 0.5 defeat at the hands of their A Team clubmates. Having said that, all the games were competitive and the losers gave a good account of themselves.

On Board 1, Ian and Tom drew in a Chigorin Ruy Lopez where neither side managed to make a breakthrough.

The game between Andy and Jonathan S on Board 2 is our feature game (see below) and involved a Queen + pawns v 2 Rooks +pawns endgame – rather like Game 6 of the current World Championship match.

Marek scarcely put a foot wrong in his win against Jonathan Miller, in an attempt to create complications Jonathan went in for a piece sacrifice that unfortunately for him turned out to be unsound, Marek gobbled up the material and converted swiftly.

There were more sacrifices in Damian’s game against Vince. Vince started the game with a Smith Morra Gambit, giving up a pawn. Vince then added more fuel to the fire with a Knight Sacrifice, and then finally went all in with a positional Queens sacrifice! This left a material imbalance of Queen + Rook and Bishop V 2 Rooks and Bishop, easily winning you would think but for a time Black was rather tangled up. In the end a relieved Damian jettisoned some material to free his position and the game ended soon after.

Rob once again used his new pet opening as White to quickly establish an advantage against Tony which he converted to a win very efficiently.

All in all a tough evening at the office for The Mighty Bees, but good match experience for our newer members who can be proud of their efforts.

During the past few weeks our sides have competed in the opening rounds of the WDCL Cup competitions. “The Peninsular Cup,” “The Kalmar Cup” and “The Kalmar Shield.

We began with a thumping defeat to away at Northwich, only Ian Dutton spared our blushes achieving a draw on top board as the rest of us crashed to a heavy 5.5-0.5 defeat… Unfortunately this match finished somewhat acrimoniously as Nick on board 4 lost on time in a clearly at least drawn position having been winning for large parts of his game.

We then met the same opposition two days later as Andy Coe took over the captaincy in The Kalmar Cup. This competition is grade limited where all players need to have a combined grade of under 9999 points. Ian Dutton achieved a fine win on top board, Andy Coe played particularly well in our feature game that you can play through below. The match finished tied at 2.5-2.5 and we are still unsure whether this will be enough to progress to the next round due to the fact we are awaiting a response from the League over the estimated rating of one of our players.

Finally last Monday our Kalmar Shield team under the charge of non playing captain Tom Vout made their way up to Atherton. I don’t have a narrative to post for this match as I was not present. (Perhaps I can edit this later if any of those playing want to send me some input?) But it seems we began on the back foot by defaulting bottom board and Atherton won the match 3.5-1.5.

B Team Captain Nick Burriss’s match report:

Massively out-graded on every board, The Mighty Bees suffered a heavy (4-1) defeat at Atherton. Several key players were not available to play for us which gave Anthony Lloyd the opportunity to make his league chess debut – and a very impressive one it was too! He so nearly won a Knight and Pawns endgame, but in the end he had to settle for a draw. On top board Tom steadfastly scored our other half-point whilst Vince fell victim to a fierce mating attack, Andy ran out of time in a difficult position and I ran out of luck and ability in a tricky minor pieces and pawns ending.

Never mind. We shall return – hopefully with a glorious victory in our next league match versus ……………….The ‘A’ Team.