Our online club has had a busy week, playing Round 3 of the 4NCL (div 3 vs Horsham) on Tuesday, Wednesday club night mix of Blitz and Long-play, and a Blitz Challenge (10 min + 10 sec) against local friends Holmes Chapel.
Neville Layhe (aka Whitevanman) set the ball rolling on Tuesday with a comfortable win having gained a 2 pawn advantage (connected pass pawns) early on before taking his time to ensure the position was converted to our benefit. Amy Lovatt (Gnowm) made an early error on board 1 losing an exchange which was always going to be decisive against a much higher rated opponent, and so the scores were levelled. Rick Renagade (aka DONT_ WALK_OFF) played his normal explosive style to crack open the opposition defences. A slightly premature sac of 2 rooks for a queen missed an immediate winning chance as captain David Hulme (watching all games) became nervous, before restoring a forcing mate combination, put us in the lead and guaranteed our first point of the 4NCL season. The final game saw Karl Lockett (aka ZZCrewe) taking advantage of a spacial advantage on board 2 converting into two huge central pass pawns. Karl took his time to tie down his opponents pieces so much so that his opponent had no squares for Rook, Bishop and pawns as Karl’s freedom allowed a mating net to be set up but did not need to finish it off as time ran out for the other player, to finish the match with a 3-1 flourish.
Wednesday saw a typical club night with 14 members playing 77 Blitz Games and a couple of other members preferring a Long-play game using normal League time controls. The Blitz event was won by the club’s leading player Bart Fajfer (aka pelbonek) with junior Harry Gardiner (aka Gingerninja2003) 2nd and 3rd placed Karl Lockett.
Thursday saw the club’s 2nd inter-club Blitz challenge. Our first event saw us soundly trounced by Chester’s big-guns, but this time we outnumbered and outgraded Holmes Chapel. Although we ran out as comfortable winners the stand out performance came from HCCC’s Colin Mills (aka knightrider11) with an amazing 100% score of 5/5 which would have been 6/6 had the final game not been cut-out, as he single-handedly scored 16 of HC’s 18 pts ! Crewe’s top scorers were all juniors, with Harry Gardiner and Lukasz Michalek (aka Good-40-percent) amassing 22 pts between them. Most pleasing was 15 y/o Safwan Khan’s (sim_wan05) 100% performance. Thanks to Pat Bennett from HC for orgainsing the event.