Horsham 1 win local derby

The 1sts vs 2nds has been a close affair in recent years, but Horsham 1 reversed that trend by winning 4.5-0.5 over Horsham 2 on Tuesday night, although the result could have been a bit closer than the scoreline suggests…

On board 4 Ian had a pair of raking bishops against Peter, and some complex-looking tactics netted him a pawn. Ian then forced the exchange of queens and looked like pressing for the win but unfortunately blundered his knight and Peter made no mistake in the resulting endgame. On board 3 Paul got stuck in a passive position against Dix’s English. Paul’s dark-squared bishop was a particular culprit and Dix steadily increased the pressure to win. On board 2 Phil had an interesting Closed Sicilian-style setup against Mike (although I didn’t catch the first few moves so could be wrong), but somehow he ended up a piece for a pawn down – I didn’t see whether this was a sacrifice or a mistake. Mike ended up with two rooks and a bishop vs Phil’s queen and converted the win.

On board 1 Gavin and I ended up with a strange sort of French by transposition where the centre had closed. Later on it opened up a bit but his bishop pair was countered by my g-file pressure. In a dead level position I looked at the match situation (1-0 down with only Roy not in trouble), decided only a win was good enough and went for a very risky continuation. Gavin turned down two different exchange sacrifices and I missed another drawing chance in the time scramble, leading eventually to me being mated. It was down to debutant Roy on board 5 to prevent the whitewash which he duly did, James arriving late due to traffic but they both played an interesting Nimzo-Indian with what looked like mutual chances. At the time control Roy was a pawn down in a rook & bishop endgame but his very active king ensured the draw which was confirmed after some home analysis.

Well done to the first team, hopefully they can keep up these scorelines as the season progresses. From Horsham 2’s point of view the match could have been a much closer 3-2 defeat on another day, so we look forward to doing well vs Haywards Heath next week.

A.R.J. Higgs 0-1 G.R. Lock
P. Stimpson 0-1 M.C. Forster
P. Taylor 0-1 D.N. Roberts
I.S. Comley 0-1 P. Harbott
R.D. Page 1/2–1/2 J.C. Mansson