B team conclude VMS season and attention turns to club championship

Tuesday night saw the B team play the final VMS league match of the season at Alsager. At long last Julian Hawthorne was able to make his debut for the club, while Dave Price covered for B team regular James Marshall. It looked to be plain sailing as Reinhard Haack got the Bees off to a flying a start with a quick win on board 5. Julian delivered a neat finish to escape the shackles on board 2 and Steve Ballantyne converted a major piece advantage on board 4, to give us victory after a loss on board 1. Dave P decided caution was the best option to agree a draw in the final game and finish the match with a 3.5-1.5 scoreline. The Bees finished the league as runners-up to the all conquering D team.

Wednesday saw a few internal club competition games take place. In division 1,  Harry Gardiner and Martin Burns cemented their one-two positions in the chase for the club championship taking their tallies to 9.5/12 and 8.5/12 respectively. The other game in division 1 saw Rick Renegade add a point to move onto 4/10. With Dave Lambton remaining on 7/10 it looks to be a three-horse race for the title.

In division 2, there has been very few games played since the turn of the year so that Nigel Gardner still leads with 6/7 from Lee Tilton on 5/7. There were wins for Steve Ballantyne (1.5/4) and Kobus Nienaber (3/6). With the tournament running until 30th June there is plenty of time for a shake up at the top.

In division 3, junior Oskar Jarzynski is piling on the pressure with a leading score of 5/6. With a maximum of 8 games to be played it is going to be difficult for anyone to overtake Oskar, although Mike Keenan is very much in contention on 4pts.

Looking ahead, the club will host Rounds 7 & 8 of the Swiss Rapidplay on Wednesday 18th May, before the South Cheshire Shield (league) gets underway the following week.