Love Minus Zero

Played at the Navigation last evening -

Marple A           V     Denton A    : Stockport Lge Div One : 17/03/2016

1 A Longson      1-0 K Celinski
2 A Walton        1-0 T Hilton
3 J Bentley         1-0 I Urwin
4 S Longson       1-0 J Tonkin
5 A Hall              1-0 Default
6 C Baker           1-0 Default

                             6-0

I was unable to play in this match as I didn't get home from work until after 8pm. I quickly drove to the Navi expecting to see a very strong Denton side in a match that was critical to their chances of staying in the division.....
Instead I was stunned to see play only taking place on the top three boards. It turned out Denton had defaulted boards five and six leaving Alan and Chris with no-one to play and our new bride on board 4 had already won.
The acting Denton Captain was very apologetic but it certainly wasn't his fault if the players were unable or unwilling to play. Incidentally this was Tims third captaincy role in 72 hours. I have come to the conclusion that chess club captaincy in 2016 is a role for extreme masochists only but this is taking "Le vice Anglais" to a whole new level.
In the three remaining games John won quickly, but Alan and Alex both had interesting struggles against high quality opponents who had both performed excellently in the extremely strong Blackpool Open last weekend. Both Alan and Alex prevailed in the end, Alan with a lightning attack and Alex with a classic good Knight v bad Bishop ending which was very educational for me in terms of seeing how very strong players eliminate all counterplay before winning material.
The match was played in excellent spirit with wedding cake provided by Alex and Sarah being all too tempting for some of our members.
Thanks to all who played or tried to, the great news is we don't have a first team match next week.

The President's Cup Semi-final: Stockport vs Marple

The result of the President's Cup match on Tuesday was:

SDCL:  The President's Cup Semi-Final
MATCH:      Stockport    v    Marple
Home Team	Scores		Away Team
1        Andy Coe	1	0	Alan Hall
2        Jill Barber	0	1	Jeff Barlow
3        Dave Pardoe	0.5	0.5	Tony Kay
4        John Kelly	0.5	0.5	Neil Dainty
5        Peter Taylor	0.5	0.5	Trefor Thomas
MATCH RESULT	2.5	2.5	DATE:       15/03/16

 

Stockport go through to the final on board elimination.

This was a fantastic effort against Stockport. Like us they struggled to field a really strong team, though they still out-graded us considerably on every board.  At least I managed to win the coin toss, so we had the white pieces on three boards. The match was eventually drawn but Stockport went through on a tiebreak.

I can't comment on individual games as I was totally focused on my game with Jill Barber which was the last to finish (60 moves) and I even managed to win an endgame! Thanks to all for their efforts.

Help!

Played at Holmes Chapel chess club last evening -

Holmes Chapel            V  Marple A  : Stockport Lge Div One: 10/03/2016

1 J Turner           0.5/0.5  I Craft
2 P Bennett             1-0    G Trueman
3 B Scattergood      1-0    A Hall
4 A Raeburn        0.5/0.5  C Baker
5 I Bates                 1-0      T Cowling
6 M Roberts        0 .5/0.5  J Barlow

                             4.5/1.5

In the Stockport League at least we have been defying chess gravity for some time now. It had to end at some point and we came down to earth with a bump in South Cheshire. Given the fact that we were outgraded on five of the six boards this is the kind of result you would expect. However it could have been different as there were good draws for Jeff, Chris and Isaac whilst Alan and Terry were both unfortunate to lose.
This result opens up the title race and I would appeal to all our higher graded players if they can to try and be available for our remaining fixtures.
A sincere thanks to all who made the long journey and to Neil for allowing his B team to be depleted, which meant we had two under strength teams competing at the same time. At least everyone who played at Holmes Chapel is now familiar with the soundtrack of "The Revenant"!.

Running Up That Hill

Played at the Navigation last evening -

Marple 1           V     Urmston 1         : Manchester League Div One   : 03/03/2016

1 I Craft           1-0         S Jones
2 G Trueman   0.5/0.5   D McCarthy
3 A Hall            0.5/0.5   D Owen
4 C Baker         0-1         J Pendlebury
5 T Cowling     0-1         J Hopkins
6 D Preen         1-0  P Shaughnessy
7 T Brown        0.5/0.5   M Davis

                          3.5/3.5

I haven't got time to write much of a match report but given that we were very short of high graded players this was a very creditable draw, especially since we were outgraded on virtually every board.
There were great wins for Isaac and David and added to three solid draws, including Toby in what I think was his first team debut,  this enabled us to garner 3.5 points.
A very big thanks to all who played, I know that some of you rearranged things to enable us to get any team out at all.