After last week's thrashing by Denton we faced a more evenly matched team in Heywood 3. However we were still out-graded on the top two boards.
Terry's game finished in a very early draw, so he was very disappointed to find all the beer was keg! My game also came to a quick ending when my opponent resigned after my eighteenth move. I had played a Moscow Sicilian with white, exchanging bishops on d7. My opponent blundered with Nc4, allowing Qa4+ , winning the piece. He resigned when about to lose more material. For once I can tell you what happened in the other games.
Tony Doust moved into an endgame with 2 pawns v 2 queenside and 4 v 2 kingside. He skilfully dragged the white king kingside then moved his own king queenside to win a pawn and promote. It was now 2 wins and a draw but the action elsewhere was clearly favouring Heywood.
Tony Kay was facing an attack from Tony Jinks on his castled king along an open h file which he saw off. They moved into an endgame where both players had queen and five pawns. Jeff was a pawn down, but this later developed into 3 connected outside passed pawns. He did well to hang on as long as he did and how he produced such an immaculate scoresheet under the pressure is beyond me.
Chris also seemed unlikely to win - John Carrington (146) had four connected passed pawns!
Meanwhile Andy Jenkins was facing eleven year old Nugith Jayawarna whose grade is clearly not going to stay as low as 148! Andy showed him the value of experience and had two rooks and five pawns against rook, bishop and three. Nugith's demeanour suggested he knew what was coming. Andy used his rooks to win more pawns and coped with Nugith's threats with cool aplomb. When he won we needed half a point to win the match, but Chris's game was over and Jeff's was only going to finish one way, although he battled on.
So I showed Tony the match sheet showing that a draw would win the match. The queens had now gone and it was now, I think, four pawns each. Tony mopped up the two queenside pawns and the other Tony seemed to me (but necessarily to anyone else) to be in zugwang . I thought Tony's king would march across the board and win, but the Jinks cleverly created an unstoppable passed pawn and our Tony resigned.
A good result nevertheless:
HEYWOOD 3.5-3.5 MARPLE 2
1. 148 Nuthin Jayawarna 0-1 Andy Jenkins 130
2. 146 James Carrington 1-0 Chris Baker 129
3. 131 Dave Almond 0.5-0.5 Terry Cowling 127
4. 124 Luboslav Socha 1-0 Jeff Barlow 124
5. 120 Tony Jinks 1-0 Tony Kay 120
6. 104 Dave Thorp 0-1 Neil Dainty 99
7. 58 Barry Thompson 0-1 Tony Doust 100
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