Author: David Hulme

Our glorious M team (yes our 13th team !!) made the trek to Cheddleton on a foul Friday night to play a division 6 match against the host’s D team.

Our team was full of players making their league debuts for the club and all set off in nervous excitement. The team all arrived in advance of the captain (yours truly) as I was delayed by a certain junior dressed in his pyjamas as I knocked on the door at 6.45pm – not a promising start – as the weather was horrible and almost certain to delay our journey.

I was taking our two reserves – Mayank and Andrew C – who were paired up with stronger opponents than planned as Cheddleton’s own team was disrupted by the filthy weather (Storm Austen). As I arrived the match was already underway with our four debutants – Phil Foster, Jo Estridge, James Foster and Thomas Rowland. I could only smile with pride as the team set about their tasks. Thomas was first to finish but played his longest ever game before resigning after about an hour. Young James on board 3 was in the ascendancy with a two major piece advantage, but fell into the common trap of “stale-mating” his opponent. On board 2, Jo’s game was a delight to watch as advantages swung too and fro, from being a piece up out of the opening, then a piece down in the middle game and then creating a great plan to find the check mate. The friendly spirit between the teams was great to watch as the match was heading to a conclusion with the scores level and the last board in play. The game between Phil and Peter Hiscock (father of two of the other Chedd players in their team) was a cracker ! Both players were thinking of offering a draw but decided to play on and it was not until around 10pm that Peter found a superb combination to sac a piece and blow open Phil’s defences to emerge victorious, and give the Cheddleton the narrow victory. (2.5-1.5)

Meanwhile Mayank and Andrew had finished their games, sharing the spoils (one win, one loss). Mayank showed some excellent attacking skills, after developing his pieces much quicker after an early gambit to force and breakthrough against the uncastled King. Well played Mayank !!

A glance at the league tables shows Crewe in “rude health” as we appear top of all league tables currently except for division 6. To be fair this is mainly because our teams have played more matches than most other clubs so far as every one of our 13 teams has played 3 matches already. It is of course far too early in the season to read anything into this.

Finally, just to mention we have our “Congress Crew” playing at the Scarborough Congress this weekend. Hopefully there will be a news item on that in the next few days.

Tuesday night saw the last of the Summer wine – or I should say the Summer Knockouts as David Lambton and Jamie Roberts battled to become 2026 Open Knockout champion. The writer was absent so cannot report on the game but reading the LMS internal results is able to determine that Jamie won the game on his last day as a 14 year old ! No doubt the champagne was out on Wednesday to celebrate his birthday and winning the knockout.

Congratulations to Jamie, as one of our young superstars secures another trophy, to be awarded at next year’s AGM

It was a busy start to the new league season last night as we had 8 teams in action all playing derbies as their first matches for 26/27.
Before the league matches got underway we had the play-offs for the Time & Point Handicap deferred from last week. In the semi-finals James managed to beat Steve K, and Tommy edged his way to overcome Nathan (he who could have won the trophy but for his superb sportsmanship last week).

So we had the “youthful showdown” as two 14 year-olds slugged it out to become winner of the coveted Les Hall Memorial Trophy. Tommy won the toss for choice of colours and interestingly chose black, allowing James an extra minute on the clock which reduced the time difference to 3 mins (6 vs 9), with Tommy hoping the black odds would do the trick.
James was always in the ascendancy and was a piece up with a couple of minutes remaining on his clock vs Tommy’s 4 mins. The black king advanced into danger and effectively became trapped and allowed James to finish with a very neat mate in the middle of the board with a Rook and bishop as black tried to activate his King, hoping to play for time, leaving James as the worthy winner !

I was not able to watch the Major KO final between Julian and Mario, so can only report on Julian’s success adding another trophy to his collection.

Congratulations to James and Julian who will be awarded their trophies at next year’s AGM.

In the league Division 1 matches, Crewe A won 4-0 against the B team (you can see one of those games below), while a weakened C team held the D team to a 2-2 draw, but could have easily won.
Crewe G narrowly won 2.5-1.5 vs Crewe H in NSDCA division 3 and the K team beat the L team 3-1 in division 5.

After move 44, there is a gap in the recording of this game. Eventually, after an uncertain number of moves, the players found themselves in this position and the game ended as follows:

For the first time we’ve got to the end of the night and still don’t know who the winner is. The Swiss Manager Pairing Software did its work, thanks to the expert knowledge of chairman Dave, to give us a four-way tie at the end of the scheduled five rounds. With the clock ticking past 10.30 at the end of round 5, we decided it was too late to continue to the play-offs as two of the contenders are 14 years old and have school in the morning.

Despite best efforts to get the event underway at 7.30, we were thrown the usual curve balls as illness caused one withdrawal around 5.30pm. The crammed car park forced numerous players to park away from the venue causing inevitable delays and then pairings had to be revised as several expected members did not arrive. However it was great to see a returning member as Rick Renegade rejoined the club, some 9 years after walking in on our 2017 T&P Handicap. We were also delighted that our 2016 winner Lukasz Holcman accepted the invitation to join us for what many see as the highlight of the club year.

The first round got underway at 7.45pm with 55 players in action (one getting a full point bye) and results went mainly to plan as the top half of the pack notched up the majority of wins. However there were three surprise results as the underdogs picked up valuable early wins. These went to Phil Foster (ranked 39), Mal Green (43) and six year old Jasper Ludlow (54th), which meant they were head and shoulders above the pack with their handicaps of 1.5; 2 & 2.5 pts respectively to be added to their 5-round scores.

Round 2 saw several of the big guns suffer unexpected losses as 3 of the top 6 came unstuck. The round 1 underdog winners suffered the consequence of much tougher pairings in Round 2, as the cream began to rise to the top. There were 13 players on 2/2 with all being seeded in the top half.

Round 3 produced some titanic battles as only four players emerged with a 100% record still intact, and several draws (which are quite rare in this event) railroaded another four of the leading pack. Only one of the top ten seeds was on 3/3 meaning all the other top 10 were now out of contention to win the event. The handicaps are stacked so the top players must score 5/5 to have any chance of winning, as there will normally be some improving lower rated players that score more than 5 pts with the handicaps. So at the end of Round 3 we had James Ratcliffe, John Astley, Pawel Stanny and Nathan Fourie as the only players on 100%. However the handicaps of scratch, one, one and 1.5 pts gave Nathan a bit of an edge.

Round 4 saw James and Nathan emerge victorious. Several other players were in contention going into round 5 thanks to the handicaps which gave them the chance to score more than 5 pts. These included Finn Charboneau, Tommy Cooke, Dave Roberts, and Steve Knott. However it would be the board 1 pairing in round 5 that would determine the likely outcome. James Ratcliffe (5 mins) knew he had to beat Nathan (11 mins) to force a play-off. If Nathan could avoid defeat he would be the outright winner with a combined score of 6 or 6.5pts. If James could win his 100% score guarantees a play-off place with anyone scoring 5 pts or more. The final round saw Tommy and Steve Knott both win to move onto 5.5 pts.

The drama from board 1 was electric, as James gained a pawn advantage but Nathan swapped off nearly all the major pieces to leave one of those difficult Rook endings which often end up in draws. However with Blitz games nothing is straight forward and James made a big error moving his King into check when he only had 23 seconds left. As the Arbiter I advised the players that Nathan was entitled to claim the win, but Nathan chose the sporting option of playing on, knowing he couldn’t really force the win but should hold on for a draw despite being a pawn down. James somehow kept the game alive moving with incredible speed and control, and having been over a minute down when he put himself in check, suddenly found he was hovering around 8 seconds left when Nathan froze and let 11 seconds disappear to be “flagged”.

It took some time to work out that four players were now involved in a play-off.
So next week we will have two rounds of armageddon chess to determine who will win the Les Hall Memorial Trophy.

The semi-finals are James (W) vs Steve K and Tommy (W) vs Nathan.
White players receive an extra minute to their allocated times, so James will have 6 mins vs Steve’s 12. Tommy will get 10 mins vs Nathan’s 11. If these games are drawn then black is deemed the winner. Colours for the final will be based on the toss of a coin or other agreed method, where white will be given one extra minute again and draw odds give black the win.

Hopefully the semi-finals will take place at 7.00pm next Tuesday (15th) and the final should start no later than 7.30pm.

Please see below for the final cross-table and rankings, noting that three players scored 5.5pts with the handicap to finish in the play-offs with the only 100% record. Dave Price and Pradhyun Ranjith scored 5 pts with their handicaps and there were 8 players finishing on 4.5 pts with their handicaps as well.

Full result’s