Macclesfield 2 Marple 4

Macclesfield put up a good fight against a strong Marple side and gave us a real fright. Michael was a piece up early on but then his opponent got some play and suddenly a huge centre and unstoppable attack and he was mated soon after. Then George, who looked slightly better to me in a sharp middle game fell for a sucker punch knight fork and had to resign. 2-0 down was not part of the plan. However, Paul brushed off the cobwebs to produce a very nice mating finish with queen and knight which we will publish if we can get hold of it and Daniel equalised for us by finishing off his opponent with a nicely controlled and crushing game. This left Alex and I. We both looked level, and kept looking at each other’s games! Alex then appeared to be worse and losing a pawn but amazingly his opponent overlooked a back rank mate threat and walked into it. Realising that we would now win the match on board count I turned down the offer of a draw in a level position and managed to finish the game nicely, though not as nicely as I could have done.

1 Soames, Tony 172 0-1 Fernandez, Daniel 212
2 Risley, Dave 171 0-1 Longson, Alex 206
3 Kumar, Vijay 155 0-1 Kirby, Paul 176
4 Lobo, Denzil 153 1-0 Fernandez, Michael 156
5 Laurence. Geoff 150 1-0 Kolbusz, George 160
6 Caulkett, Pete 148 0-1 Hewitt, Sean 158