Horsham 2 come off second best
In its first 'external' match of the season, away against Worthing 2, Horsham 2 was modestly outgraded on all boards (average 15 points) and went down quite heavily 1.5-3.5.
First to finish after just 5 minutes and 5 moves (!) was Phil on board 1. His opponent was feeling particularly under the weather and in gentlemanly fashion, Phil agreed a 'grandmaster' draw.
Next up was Ian who, in a sharp position arising from his normal English, played his intended sequence of moves in the wrong order and as such finished the game in second place.
Meanwhile Peter introduced something of a novelty for him when, quite early on, he moved his King two squares towards his kingside rook which then jumped over the king! A fairly solid game ensued which ended in honours even.
For his part, Alex created a fairly impressive looking advance of pawns against his opponent's king but unfortunately they came to a halt and his position was infiltrated through the queenside with ultimate material loss.
I was a bit confused in my own game, allowing a French set up but with the white squared bishop being outside the pawn chain which led to quite a complex struggle. Long after everyone else had gone home and with the match already decided, a truce was called with just a rook and 5 pawns each.
| Worthing 2 (Home) | Horsham 2 (Away) | |
|---|---|---|
| Chris Jones 186 | 0.5-0.5 | Phil Stimpson 167 |
| Cassie Graham 178 | 0.5-0.5 | Peter Harbott 160 |
| Keith Homeyard 169 | 0.5-0.5 | Chris Heath 157 |
| Rakesh Nair 168 | 1-0 | Alex Taylor 157 |
| Nicholas Skinner 163 | 1-0 | Ian Comley 152 |
| 3.5-1.5 |
Horsham 2 had White on odd-numbered boards.
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Roger Waddingham
7 November, 2018 - 17:24
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Horsham 4 : Start to the season
We started with an away match against the one Sussex Uni team and were wondering which of their previous two teams' worth of members would turn up. It was a mixed bag as it turned out. On board 1, Julie scored a fantastic draw against a player graded 70 points higher than her. Meanwhile, the next three of our team regulars all managed to shed material unnecessarily and lose against slightly weaker opposition. Our new member, Guy Turvey, played a solid game to achieve a deserved victory on board 5, giving the final result some respectability for our team (1.5 - 3.5).
Five of us made the long journey to Hastings with no great hope of success, having seen their team's gradings. We started with 0.5 from 2 as Guy made a quick exit and yours truly played a strategic game where my opponent was manoeuvred into accepting a draw after I managed to double my rooks on the f-file. Julie accepted half a point soon after. There then ensued two titanic battles under the new time controls, lasting till well after 10:45, with over 65 moves each. Richard had a clear win in a rook and pawn ending, but his partner took about half an hour to concede it. Bob Lanzer played a very well calculated ending to extract a win from knight and three pawns against bishop and three pawns. This gave a very pleasing overall result of 3-2 to Horsham 4.