The last away game of the season for the F team, saw Mike (aka Mike),
Nigel (aka Rick), Lukasz (aka Vyvyan) & Ben (aka Neil) travel to play
Cheddleton F in Friday’s battle of the effs.
The team arrived in relatively good spirits knowing that no league titles
were at stake and hoping to enjoy their chess and finish relatively early
as 75% are attending the Newcastle congress over the weekend.
Boards 3 & 4 began cagily and for some of the time the Crewe players
appeared to be under pressure. In particular, Ben who had to
survive a particularly nasty looking attack but survive he did showing a
good degree of patience as both he and Lukasz eventually converted
their growing superiority on the night into wins.
Meanwhile I was on two and after allowing my opponent to attack for a
while eventually broke out and had gained the upper hand. However
having seen the other two wins I offered a draw and the team won and
maybe we could all get an early night; relatively.
However, Mike batting at the top of the team on board 1, had other ideas. Despite playing a much higher-graded opponent, he had developed a very sound position which appeared even and was massively up on time. His opponent had less than 10 minutes left with most pieces still on the board and all seemingly tied up. Mike then considered, at length, a possible attack
which involved the sacrifice of a knight and eventually he went for it.
Unfortunately, he had miscalculated and things began to come unstuck.
As they did so Mike used up more and more time trying to extricate himself and eventually it all became too much and Mike had to concede
leaving the team with a satisfying 2.5 – 1.5 win. Mike had played really
well to get himself into what I think was a winning position until one
move and the clock did for him.
So the young ones came home victorious and were pleased to see that
the guest appearance of Alexei Sayle (aka David H) reaped its deserved
reward. His A team won the division 2 title by dint of Macclesfield being
unable to pull off a very unlikely result against Cheddleton