Horsham 5 Reach Mid-Season Break With A Win

Horsham 5 travelled to Haywards Heath last Thursday to take on their 3rd team. Peter Rankin opened the scoring with a win on board one. Playing the white pieces, Peter reports:

"We played an unusual looking Caro-Kann, with black opting to play a closed set-up with all of his pawns parked on the light squares. White, in full attacking mode and looking to exploit black's lack of development, completely overlooked his own defence and blundered a centre-pawn. Both sides castled queenside, and white at this point had no better option than to continue pressing on with a kingside attack hoping for a breakthrough. The decisive moment came with white making a serious threat to pin/win black's queen in a complicated position. Black could find no better move than to give up an exchange and resigned shortly after."

Guy continued our progress with a win on board 3.

I was playing as black on board 2 and faced a King's gambit. Sensing my position was not good on the king's side, I took a gamble on castling long, despite having a half-open b file. My opponent quickly exploited this and although I felt comfortable after winning a piece, stockfish thought otherwise! Fortunately white did not fully exploit his positional advantage and, after allowing me to gain another piece and force a swap of queens, his position fell apart and resignation followed.

James Reid on board 4 wasn't able to follow the trend, but despite his loss we had a 3 - 1 win overall.

We approach Christmas second only to Horsham 4 in Division 3, but all but one of the teams below us have at least 1 match in hand, so there's still all to play for as we enter 2025.