Horsham Knocked Out!

Our MSL Knock-Out team played its first match of the season last night (5th December). Our opponents were Lewes 1 - they've entered 2 KO teams. Being their first team, it was anticipated that they might come in strength, although this is always a bit of guesswork until you see who turns up on the night. We therefore countered with a team based more on strength than possible handicap advantage. In the event, Lewes were missing some of their top players and were significantly the weaker side on paper. They were out-graded by Horsham on every board and by an aggregate of 141 points across the teams as a whole. Under the competition's handicapping system this meant Horsham had to score at least 4 points from the 5 boards to win the match. Alas, the visitors had mis-read the script as one-by-one our boards 2 to 4 fell to supposedly weaker opponents. The last game to finish was that between James Mansson and Barry Maufe on board 1. With both players relying on the 10 seconds increment per move to stay in the game, Barry had the advantage of pawn and rook against just a rook and finally found the route through with this pawn. It was down to Lucy on board 5 to retain a modicum of honour for Horsham.

Full results were:-

1. James Mansson 0 - 1 Barry Maufe
2. Peter Harbott 0 - 1 Richard Welford
3. Chris Heath 0 - 1 James Pullan
4. Ian Comley 0 - 1 Peter Weston
5. Lucy Bennet-Stevens 1 - 0 Keith Osborne

It remains just for us to wish Lewes luck in future rounds of the competition.