Horsham 4th team secured their position in the 3rd division on Tuesday with a great victory over Brighton & Hove 5.

We had a rather strange start to the night with one of the opposition arriving on time with the message that their top board player would be racing over from Brighton to play. Thankfully the other team members arrived at 7.45 and we were able to being on boards 2-5. In Roger’s game on board 4, both side had bad pawn structures but especially his opponent and finished quickly when Rogers queen took a central pawn with a check and fork. My game was not great in that I went a pawn down and immediately on the defensive but managed to hold position and get a draw. Melusi’s game was interesting with a big battle over the centre but a later bishop sac turned sour. Meanwhile the 45 minutes had past for the board 1 player to turn up, we gave him another 15 but eventually had to call it, poor Mathew had a wasted evening. The player did finally turn up another 25 minutes later, would have been interesting playing a whole game with 10 minutes on the clock but unfair on Mathew.

Finally Julie’s game on board 5 went the distance and she ended two pawns up and her opponent resigned, final result 3.5 to 1.5.

1. Mathew Forster 1 – 0(d) Ndakwo, Hussaini S
2. Melusi Nkomo 0 – 1 Hamilton, Michael
3. Paul Richardson ½ - ½ De Silver, Arthur
4. Roger Waddingham 1 – 0 Ohlson, Peter
5. Julie Denning 1 - 0 Sythoff, Jan Ten