Horsham Chess Club

Congratulations to Horsham 4 for their promotion from Division 4!

Horsham 3 were at home for their last match of the season needing a draw to guarantee second place in the division and it was bound to be a tough match with Lewes 2 needing a win to avoid probable relegation.

In order to finish the Quickplay Knockout , Anthony Higgs and Brian Donnelly had arranged to play their Semi-Final, then for James Mansson to play the winner all on the same club evening. Anthony overcame Brian 2.5-1.5 in a tightly-contested match, before taking James on in the final.

Horsham 2 finished their season with a disappointing loss 2-3 away against Lewes 2. As a result we will finish 3rd or 4th in Division 2 depending on the result of Woodpusher’s final game against Uckfield.
Lewes fielded one of their strongest teams of the season and all of the games were well contested. Phil was first to finish, agreeing a draw. I blundered badly on move 30 and resigned shortly afterwards as I was completely lost – this subsequently proved to be the critical game that cost us the match.

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Horsham 1 scored a narrow 3-2 victory away against a strong Worthing 2 team.

Looking at the Worthing 2 line up, a number of the players could (and have) played for the first team, so it was clearly not going to be an easy night.

Matt Forster sensibly bailed out with a draw against Chris Jones when the latter offered it. His position looked rather shaky at the time as subsequent analysis seemed to demonstrate.

Paul Taylor won material against Peter Larwood on bottom board and consolidated to secure Horsham's first win.

Horsham 3 were away to Crowborough on Friday evening and expecting a tough challenge. Crowborough put up two strong players but thankfully not as strong as we were expecting and we out graded them heavily on boards 3-5 so fancied our chances.

Horsham 2 returned to winning ways with a convincing 4-1 home victory on Tuesday against Eastbourne 2.
The four games that we won were all done so fairly comfortably – Dix, Lucy & Chris all won material quite early on and had no problems converting their advantage to win. Phil was able to play one of his favourite lines of the Grand Prix Attack and a strong attack also lead to a comfortable win.

Many Horsham members will recall the ever-cheerful John Coules, who sadly passed away on Feb.16th, aged 75. John was a regular member of Horsham Chess Club for most of the period 1983 – 2011 and had been a valued committee member and team captain.

Very sad news concerning the passing of Oliver Andrew who founded Woodpushers and was well known in MSCL chess. I copy below the eulogy to him from the MSCL website