The main playing room looked pretty desserted last night, with about 15 members in the room as a similar number of juniors occupied the coaching room, while we had our south Cheshire B team playing at Fenton.
It was a tough night as we suffered a 4-0 whitewash at the hands of the runaway champions – so congratulations to Fenton on regaining the South Cheshire Shield.
Meanwhile back at The Caritas there were some “big clashes” in the Open Knockout. First to finish was Neville Layhe as the underdog who held Harry Gardiner to a draw, before coming off second best in the Armageddon tie break that sees Harry through to the semi-finals. Next to finish was Karl Lockett who knocked out Lukasz Michalek in what looked an exciting game after Lukasz’s Grob attack opening. This was the last game to complete in Round 2, so now Karl faces Chairman Dave in the quarter-finals. The other clash saw Carmel Barwick knockout Martin Burns in their quarter-final game, as she inflicted Martin’s first defeat in 18 games going back to March. Both players have seen their ratings climb steadily in the last few months, with Martin up approx 70 pts to 1970 since January, while Carmel has moved from approx 1650 to around the 1800 level now over the same period. However according to our secretary’s investigations Carmel’s rating is missing a recent congress where she should add at least 25 points to her rating and should now leapfrog to approx 1840.
We also had a newcomer (Joe Moxon) playing a long-play rated game, while juniors Kryspin Kaputsa and Noah Smith shared the spoils in a brace of Rated rapidplay games.