After a great but busy for some Crewe Congress it was back to league action for the club’s two top teams. Both had home fixtures, our ‘A’ team hosted Macclesfield whilst the ‘B’ team played Holmes Chapel.
A curious incident occured on top board for the ‘A’ team. Captain Martin Burns had been playing his game for some time when his opponent noticed that the chess clock they were using was malfunctioning in that the 10 second increment was not being added, therefore with the position on the board being drawish both players agreed a draw. On board 4 Jim Grange had a comfortable victory, winning a piece quite early on then forcing his opponent to trade his queen for two rooks. a material advantage resulting in the win. Harry Gardiner on Board 2 built up a dream of a pawn chain of 6 connected pawns, the two most advanced of which being passed pawns. The game went in to a double rook endgame and although his opponent made things difficult Harry managed to get the win. In the final game to finish on board 3 Karl Lockett playing black was in a losing position and defending however his opponent missed Karl’s mate in three threat meaning Karl gained a fortunate win. Indeed analysis after the game showed that if his opponent had earlier played a different move whilst attacking it would surely have led to a defeat for Karl. This meant the ‘A’ team won the match 3.5 – 0.5.
On board 1 for the ‘B’ team Simon Layhe had another excellent win against a much higher rated opponent, in fact the last time they both met a few years ago his opponent won comfortably, this win is therefore another example of how much Simon has improved recently. Elsewhere for the ‘B’ team there were wins for David Hulme and Dave Lambton. So an impressive win for the ‘B’ team against a decent Holmes Chapel team.
The result of these early matches mean that Crewe ‘A’ are top of Division 1 with maximum points, whilst Crewe ‘B’ are only a place behind having 3 points from a possible 4. How often can we say that two Crewe teams are first and second in the League?
In addition to the league matches there was a couple more Club Championship games with Pawel Stanny getting off the mark with a win in division 2, and Vicky Kelsall adding a win to her tally in division 3.
The week ended with our C team making the trip to Cheddleton on a miserable Friday night to take on their B team. Captain Dave Lambton on board 1, and Dave Price on board 4 had wins to ensure the team shared the match points with Cheddleton B. Our C team top the table for now with 3pts from two games, while all other teams have games in hand at this very early stage of the season.