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.