Horsham 1 narrowly defeat Lewes 1

Horsham 1 scored a narrow win against Lewes 1 in the Mid-Sussex League last Tuesday.

Mike Forster was first to finish, with a draw against Martin Costley, who managed to equalise with solid play against Mike's English/Catalan hybrid.

James Mansson emerged clearly worse from a rather unorthodox opening, but was fortunate that his opponent eventually miscalculated, allowing him to win substantial amounts of material; his opponent very soon resigned.

Mark Broom and Gavin Lock ended up drawing after Mark was unable to make anything of his slight edge.

Anthony bamboozled his opponent with an unorthodox line of the Philidor, who was unable to come up with a coherent plan against an early ...g5. Eventually, Black's attack crashed through as the Black pawn which White had left on g2 to shield his king proved White's undoing.

Following Anthony's win, Horsham were 3-1 up and had the match in the bag, which meant that the drama in the bottom board game did not affect the result.

Matt Forster had a strong attack for a pawn, but overlooked a counter-attacking move by his opponent when both players were very short of time. His opponent was able to break through and deliver mate, although there was a good chance that Matt would have lost on time in any case.

This final result gave Horsham a 3-2 win. The full score of the match is given below:

Note that Horsham 1, as the home team, were White on even-numbered boards.