Horsham 1 defeat Worthing 1

Horsham 1 scored a good win away at Worthing 1 last Monday.

Horsham was able to field its strongest team, which was important against a typically tough Worthing side.

Matthew Forster was first to finish, with a good win as Black against Mike Nicholas.

Seeing this, Anthony Higgs decided to offer a draw to Cassie Graham in a balanced position, which was accepted.

Mike Forster had a complicated struggle against Dominic Miller, which ended as a draw, as such things often do.

This left the two games on boards one and two.

On board one, the game had shifted rapidly in the opening from a Trompowsky to a London System to an Exchange Caro-Kann. Matthew Payne offered the exchange of queens in what looked like a rather dubious manner, as his pawns were then doubled. Not long after, he allowed Gavin Lock to win a piece. However, the game was then plunged into complications, from which Gavin eventually emerged with the win.

The last game to finish was between Dave Graham and James Mansson. After a complicated middlegame, where James was under pressure, the game ended up in an endgame; this should have been fine for James, but he soon slipped up, and Dave secured a winning position. However, here the effect of the new time control, where the players are required to play at least 60 moves, kicked in; Dave kept his advantage for a while, but then made the fateful decision to give up his knight for Black's remaining pawn. He obviously hoped in the resulting endgame, where he had a rook and two fairly advanced connected passed pawns against his opponent's rook and knight, to win with his pawns, but the rook and knight combined well to defend; a draw was therefore agreed after the game reached the cut-off point.

The overall result was therefore 3.5-1.5 in Horsham 1's favour.

Horsham 1 had White on odd-numbered boards.