First match of the season - Horsham 3rd vs Horsham 4th

In the MSL division 2 both Horsham 3rd and 4th teams had to start the season with a match against each other and even with a large grading difference a win is never guaranteed.

As the 3rd team were officially the home team we started with black on odds and everything started off quietly, in fact even after a couple of hours all 5 boards were continuing to play with no obvious wins or losses.

This is where my game against John Cannon started to get very complicated, although I was a pawn up John had the attack and the last hour was a blur. When we finished our time dash to 42 I then realised all the other games had finished and always nice to see a 3-0 up on the top boards! Apologies to Alex & Matthew as I didn’t see how their games finished, but speaking with Tim afterwards, Richard played a good opening and won a pawn but Tim got an attack going and in a very open and complex position was able to mate the black king.

Both games for Ian/Mick & John/Me required taking away for further analysis, Ian had a passed pawn against Mick’s cramped position and John had an exposed King so we were expecting two wins and indeed the computers showed that was the case.

So a final 5-0 result, great start for the 3rd team but I’m sure the 4th will come back strongly.

1 172 Freeland, Alexander 1 - 0 Warren, Nick 149
2 161 Pavlovic, Tim 1 - 0 Moorhouse, Richard 142
3 156 Forster, Matthew 1 - 0 Denning, Julie L 137
4 151 Comley, Ian S 1 - 0 Harris, Michael C 137
5 149 Richardson, Paul 1 - 0 Cannon, L John 136