Sussex League

Yesterday's game against Brighton & Hove 2 saw another win for Horsham 3, bringing the team's total score to 5.5 out of 8 games. The match started off strong with another Barry Attack played by Jordy Savill. After sacrificing a bishop on h7, he achieved a resignation from Chris Lake (1788), who was forced to sacrifice his queen to avoid mate.

I was looking through the Sussex League results and noticed Horsham 1 leading Division 1 at this early stage.

Horsham 3 are nestled at third position of Division 2 after the first game and both Horsham 4 and 5 are both on the scoreboard in Division 3 having drawn with each other!

Horsham 3 started the season with a 2.5 - 1.5 win against East Grinstead 2. The teams were very evenly matched, with an average grading of 1728 for Horsham and 1724 for our opponents.

Jordy Savill was the first to score with a quick win in the Barry attack, after Ian Dennis (1698) allowed a mate in 3. The next to arrive at a conclusion was Robert McDonald, who equalized with the Slav against Asanka Amarasinghe (1828). Although the game would continue for a while, Black had an easily drawn endgame with dark-colored bishops.

Having not unexpectedly lost heavily against Hastings 1 last week, Horsham 2 was looking for an element of revenge in last night's match against Hastings 2 but alas it was not to be. As a result of a 1.5-2.5 defeat we will definitely finish in the bottom 2 (and hence presumably relegated) though in practice this had already been decided by other results - not only would we have had to win this match but also our last fixture of the season against a very strong Worthing 1.

... if you will forgive such an oxymoron.

Approaching our fixture against Haywards Heath 1, (an unexpected relegation from Division 1 last season?), the omens didn't look great, not helped by needing to play a reserve (me) after a stronger choice had to pull out due to work commitments. Seeing Feliks Kwiatkowski and Jeff Boardman on boards 1 and 2 did nothing to allay my concerns.

Horsham 2 made the long trek to play Hastings 1 only to find that the A27 was closed for the return journey which led to exploration of parts of the globe I had never visited before!

Anyway, as regards the chess we were not unexpectedly heavily beaten (an average grading deficit of 270) but did get on the scoreboard with one draw and indeed might well have added to that.

First to finish was Peter on board 1 as white who employed a sort of reverse Slav (or Saragosa?) but the game never really took off and peace was declared after just 20 moves.

The KO competition doesn't manage to attract a large entry, although Horsham have consistently taken part for many years. This season there were 6 entrants, including 2 teams from Crowborough. Our first match was due to be against Crowborough 2, but their club was laid low by covid and they conceded the the match. We then faced a semi-final match against Sussex University. Knowing they had a potentially strong line up of players this season, we confronted them with a strong team, including Mark Broom and James Mansson.

I've been remiss in not posting match reports for the 3rd team as the season progressed, so I'll now do a bulk update!

For a fleeting moment midway through the evening there seemed a possibility that Horsham 2 would repeat their heroics of last year when they were the only team to take a point off Brighton...but in the event the end result (0.5-3.5) reflected the disparity in gradings between the two, being an average of 260.

Horsham 1 suffered a narrow 1.5-2.5 defeat away to Brighton 1 on the Monday of last week. Travelling to Brighton's new (temporary) venue, Horsham 1 looked well placed as they secured two draws on the top two boards, as Gavin Lock drew with Luke Rutherford and Mark Broom drew with Calum Salmons. However, disaster struck, when James Mansson's strong position against Geoff James fell apart in time trouble, and he ended up losing on time in what seemed in any case to have been a lost position.