It was another busy summer’s night at the Mals Club on Wednesday as our South Cheshire B team hosted Alsager. This was a close run match with the visitor’s grades just shading the advantage but the B team managed to overcome this. First board to finish was a superb result for our Adam Fields as he beat one of the Crewe old-boys playing for Alsager. On board 4 Kobus Nienaber held out for a draw despite being some 20+ grading pts below his opponent (another ex Crewe player). When Julian Bulbeck added another draw on bd 2 this ensured we had at least a share of the match points, leaving the bd 1 game in play where we had a 20+ grade point advantage. An unbalanced game developed with Neville Layhe agreeing a draw against Alsager captain Andy Barker to push Crewe over the winning line by narrow score of 2.5-1.5. The B team play their final match of the SCS season next week against Stafford where a win would catapult the team up to 3rd place in the table.
Junior Harry Gardiner had a very busy night in the Club’s division 1 of the Rapid-play. Firstly he played against the top graded player Bart Fajfer losing both games as would have been predicted. Next he took on the leader David Hulme and took a fully deserved 1.5 pts in the 2 games outplaying the 1st team captain. In the 2nd game he played a brilliant sacrifice leading to a back rank mate after deflecting the defending pieces in further forced exchanges. Harry then threw down the gauntlet to the 2016 RP champion Rich Wiltshir playing two more games. Again in the 2nd game he stifled his opponents position to such an extent that Rich had little choice but to try a risky sacrifice, that indeed proved to be unsound as Harry ramped up the pressure. In all 6 games Harry must have conceded an average well over the 40 pts max used in grade calculations. A superb effort to score 2.5 pts on the night against the top 3 players in the competition and take him to 4th place.
David continues to lead RP division 1 with 10.5/18, but with newcomer Bart Fajfer currently on 100% after 6 games, it may not be too long before he overtakes the leader and 2nd place Rich Wiltshir (7/11) with junior Harry in 4th place with 6/12.
Nigel Gardner continues to romp away in Div 2 of the Long-play as he added another win to take his score to a perfect 4/4.