Two matches to report on this week.
Monday 4th March our H team went to play Meir in div 4 and took a further 3 members to play extra rated games. The league match over 4 boards ended in a 2-2 draw with our points coming from Kobus Nienaber with a very nice attack sacrificing a pawn to open up the position and earn a superb win against a previously unbeaten board 1. Mark Randell gained another full point on board 4 to make sure we shared the points. The extra boards saw us win 2 of the 3 games. Josh Cross became our 50th member to play in the NSDCA this season as he was first to win with a wind-mill attack involving multiple knight forks. Finn Charbonneau was our other victor. Meir were very pleased that we were able to bring 7 players, plus two more in support.
On Tuesday our B team were up against Homles Chapel “A” in league division 1. With both teams missing their strongest players teams were almost equally rated (7288 to 7274). Captain David Hulme took advantage of a strong pawn centre to attack the king-side castled position to put us 1-0 up around the two hour mark. Next to finish after unleashing a well coordinated long range attack was our latest debutante – Gintare (Gee) Cross to make it 2-0 with a win on board 3. The icing on the cake came on boards 1 and 2 where both our players were outrated. Firstly Simon Layhe created a superior endgame by promoting a pawn all the way to g8 to force the opposition King away from the centre of the board, allowing his own King to mop up and leave pass-pawns on both sides forcing resignation and getting us over the winning line. Last to finish was Carmel Barwick on board 1, who was doing a good Houdini impression to escape from what looked a doomed position to emerge with a strong exchange gain and complete a 4-0 whitewash. This is the first time our Bees have ever stung a 4-0 win in the league’s top flight ! The result takes us to 13 pts from 10 matches and 2nd in the table to keep our very feint hopes of possibly winning the league – with our “A” team as favourites on the same match points but with a game in hand. The Bees continue to out perform any reasonable expectation as they manage to keep flying high and buzzing around.
Tuesday night also saw another packed schedule of internal games in the Club Championship. Harry Gardiner marches towards the title of Club Champion as he beat the nearest contender David Lambton to move into a big lead with 7.5/8 and in doing so ended David’s impressive run of 19 games without defeat including 8 back to back wins since 1st December !
Div 2 of the club championship is brewing up nicely with just one point separating the top 5 players. Richard Fish leads with 5.5/8, ahead of Doug Barnett (5/9), Oskar Jarzynski (5/8), Dave Price (4.5./5) and James Coney (4.5/6).
In division 3 Jamie Roberts (7.5/9) has a 3.5 lead over Mike Keenan, but Mike has 5 games in hand, so it will be a question of whether Mike can catch up.