4NCL Match Report- 8th September

Horsham 3 scored an astonishing victory. Heavily outgraded on every board Andrew, Charlie, and Alex won and Harry completed a mammoth 108-move draw.

Horsham 2 lost against a very strong team that would give the 1st team a challenge with their IM on board 1. Nonetheless, Guy had a great win on board 4, turning down a draw offer which meant a couple of pawn sacs, then finishing with a nice attack.

Horsham 1 took on Wimbledon 2. Horsham looked hot favourites with a 70-point average grade advantage.

But disaster struck early on! Dix Roberts on Board 2 was frozen out of Li Chess and was unable to start his game, this resulted in a loss for Dix which put us on the back foot.

My game on Board 4 however got off to a great start when my opponent gave up the e4 pawn following my Owen's defence. Then a minor piece was also lost and whites position fell apart, resignation soon followed and I secured our first win.

Mark on Board 1 had the white pieces and played the English. The middle game started looking strong for Mark when pressure started building in the centre with a very strong D pawn march. A clever tactic crushed black who had great difficulty defending against a possible back rank checkmate or conversion of the pawn, a solid game for Mark and a nice win.

The last board was now critical, we needed at least a draw from Alex who was playing white on Board 3. Alex started with the Roy Lopez and quickly gained some nice positional advantage. His opponent slipped into dangerous time problems and Alex saw the opportunity to complicate matters with some lovely strategic play. Under time pressure, black lost his queen to an Alex tactic, which then led to an immediate resignation.

Horsham won the match, the results shown below.

Horsham 1 1970 Wimbledon 2 1451
461 w Broom, Mark 2117 e 1 - 0 Williams, Michael D 1787 e
462 b Roberts, David N 1982 c d - 1 Brett, Alex I 1540 c
463 w Taylor, Alex B 1922 e 1 - 0 Selim, Omar 1315 c
464 b Ashby, Nicholas G. 1862 c 1 - 0 Sood, Kamaljit 1165 c
-½
2½ - 1

Round 3 takes place on Tuesday 22nd September @ 7.30pm