Friday night is not normally a good night for us to play matches, but we exceeded our wildest dreams last night by taking two cup teams and an army of supporters down to Leek.
In the Intermediate Cup (U1600) our team proved too strong for Cheddleton as we ran out comfortable winners 3.5-1.5 to progress to the final. George Bulbeck got us on the score sheet with an unusually early finish on board 5 (by 9.15) to give us a 1-0 lead before Pawel secured a hard fought draw on bd 4. Cheddleton’s rapidly improving junior Charlie Swinson then swung the match in the host’s favour by winning on bd 3. The significance of this result on board 3, meant we had to score more than one point from the two remaining games. Captain Nigel performed dilligently to overpower his opponent on board 2 to put us back in the lead. On board 1, 13 y/o Jamie Roberts gained the ascendancy with a pawn advantage but Nigel was sweating profusely and praying for Jamie to take the draw that would secure victory. However Jamie’s position had improved so much that he did not want to let go of a “near certain” win and duly put the contest to bed with a strong win to conclude the match 3.5-1.5, which would have been a fair expectation of the result given our rating advanatge over the 5 boards. We will face the winners of the Alsager vs Kidsgrove semi, having to play away again in the final for the 3rd time in this competition.
In the other semi for the Perry Cup (U1375) our Perry B team had another big rating advantage especially on boards 3 and 4 of the four board match. Mal Green swept to an early victory on board 4, before Cheddleton’s youth produced another fine victory on board 2 as Rowan Webb won for the hosts. Again this meant we needed at least 1.5 pts from the last 2 games to go through to the final (due to the tie break procedure that would give Cheddleton the win if the score finished 2-2). Everything appeared to be under control with Mike Keenan heading towards victory after two and a half hours at the board (No 3), but in the midst of time pressure failed to block a check; so the game was stopped for a few moments to give his opponent an extra two minutes which put a lot of pressure on Mike with his time down to just under one minute ! Mike managed eventually to force a queen exchange which led to immediate resignation from his opponent. This left another of our 13 y/o players – Tommy Cooke to conclude the match against an experienced opponent. Tommy played a very mature middle game to block an opposition pawn that had got to the 7th rank for the price of a pawn advantage to Tommy. Slowly but assuredly Tommy forced exchanges of all pieces to remove the remaining support for the pawn on the 7th, and mop up a further pawn advantage and go on to deliver the telling blow and give us a 3-1 victory. Our B team will face the winners of the Crewe A vs Meir in the final.
In addition to these two cup matches, 11 year old Jack Patullo played a long play rated game and then a further three rated Rapid play games emerging successfully from all 4 games. We had a further two members (Dave Roberts and Gerald Parton) playing Rated rapid-play games against a couple of newcomers to Cheddleton Chess Club, meaning we had 12 players from each club in competitive action. On top of this we had five more members/parents who travelled and supported our teams which incredibly meant we outnumbered the hosts at their venue !
The power of our club to bring so many of our members together was yet again evident on another superb night for both Crewe and Cheddleton Chess Clubs.