Heathcote Arms (1) 4-1 Ashby (1)

Graham B Reports:

This match was not as easy as the score line suggests, one thing Ashby do is make you grind out your results, and apart from Graham's rather exciting game that's what we did.

Rajan's was a slow positional game that eventually just strangled Chris Tipper's position and it cracked under Rajan's and the clocks pressure.

Dave looked like he had won an early pawn, but then realized his opponent could allow his own bishop to be blocked in on a7 & b8 and get the pawn back, Dave said from this point he didn't think he was better but Roy decided to swap pieces off which gave Dave an easy winning ending.

After 2hrs 35mins Mike and Larry had only took off 1 major piece and 1 or 2 pawns each and although Mike had queen and 2 rooks on the g file he couldn't break through and Larry wasn't doing anything. I think his last 5 or 6 moves were Qe7,Qd8,Qe7,Qd8,Qe7- draw agreed.

Graham's was a typically solid game until Richard sacked a rook on h6 to give him an attack on Graham's King, which looked like a winning attack, however, Graham doesn't give in and manages to manoeuvre his king toward his queen, although Richard was still threatening mates and forks with only a queen and knight. Graham has to give his rook back, gets Richards knight off for his bishop and goes into the ending 2 pawns down (Queen & 5 against Queen & 3) but has done enough to eventually get the draw.  An ending well worth seeing, I will try and get a copy from Graham.

So, a hard fought win keeps us top of Div 2 and on course to return to div 1 next season.

Graham B

P.S. pleased to see Michael get a win     

08 Nov		Heathcote Arms 1		v	Ashby 1
1	B	181	Sharpe, Graham	½ - ½	Vann, Richard	163
2	W	173	Ganger, Rajan	1 - 0	Tipper, Christopher	147
3	B	170	Bray, Dave	1 - 0	Evans, Roy	143
4	W	159	Cowley, Michael	½ - ½	Hayden, Lawrence	137
5	B	147	Booley, Graham	1 - 0	**DEFAULT**	?
				4 - 1