Horsham Chess Club

Horsham 2 made the long trek to play Hastings 1 away, more in hope than expectation, but defied the odds of an aggregate 140 grading points to share the spoils.

The Horsham KO team began, and ended, its 2018 / 19 campaign with an away match against Sussex University last night (3rd December). Robert drew on board 5 against an opponent 32 points his junior. Alas, that was the high point of the evening for us.

Yesterday, Horsham 1 scored a big win against Brighton 2.

Gavin Lock, James Mansson and Phil Stimpson all scored decisive victories over their opponents.

Anthony Higgs had a tough struggle against Robin Jones, who eventually slipped up, allowing Anthony an immediate win.

The last game to finish was Dix Roberts against Michael Hamilton. Dix appeared to have gained a decisive advantage in the endgame, but his opponent defended doggedly, and he was unable to find a way through; he therefore agreed to a draw.

This gave Horsham 1 a 4.5-0.5 win.

Horsham 1 scored a good win away at Worthing 1 last Monday.

Horsham was able to field its strongest team, which was important against a typically tough Worthing side.

Matthew Forster was first to finish, with a good win as Black against Mike Nicholas.

Seeing this, Anthony Higgs decided to offer a draw to Cassie Graham in a balanced position, which was accepted.

Mike Forster had a complicated struggle against Dominic Miller, which ended as a draw, as such things often do.

This left the two games on boards one and two.

In an evening of fluctuating fortunes Horsham 2 came close to a win but in the event had to settle for a sharing of the spoils with Lewes 1.

On board 1, Anthony stood modestly worse after a miscalculation in the opening which his opponent steadily exploited without ever allowing any counter play, ultimately leading to material loss.

Meanwhile Dix won an early pawn which he returned for piece activity but never quite enough for anything other than a shared point.

We started with an away match against the one Sussex Uni team and were wondering which of their previous two teams' worth of members would turn up. It was a mixed bag as it turned out. On board 1, Julie scored a fantastic draw against a player graded 70 points higher than her. Meanwhile, the next three of our team regulars all managed to shed material unnecessarily and lose against slightly weaker opposition. Our new member, Guy Turvey, played a solid game to achieve a deserved victory on board 5, giving the final result some respectability for our team (1.5 - 3.5).

On Friday the juniors played their first match of the season, and despite a brave showing the strength in depth of Crowborough shone through...

In its first 'external' match of the season, away against Worthing 2, Horsham 2 was modestly outgraded on all boards (average 15 points) and went down quite heavily 1.5-3.5.

First to finish after just 5 minutes and 5 moves (!) was Phil on board 1. His opponent was feeling particularly under the weather and in gentlemanly fashion, Phil agreed a 'grandmaster' draw.

Next up was Ian who, in a sharp position arising from his normal English, played his intended sequence of moves in the wrong order and as such finished the game in second place.

When a club has more than one team in a division in the Mid-Sussex League, it is normal for all the club's team to play each other, before playing the other teams. With Horsham 1 and 2 both in Division One, this meant that Horsham 1 vs Horsham 2 was the first match of the season.

Because of three first team players being unavailable, boards 3 to 5 of Horsham 1 were occupied by players one might normally expect to play for Horsham 2; admittedly two of them had played many games for the first team in previous seasons.

While Horsham 1 v Horsham 2 was taking place on the green felt there were plenty of other games going on. I was playing a particularly dynamic game so the details are a little sketchy this week!

The final first round of the Knockout was played between Andrew Burling and Richard Barrowclough. It seemed fairly level with a fairly stable position but Richard managed to work some magic to make it through to the second round.