Littlethorpe 2 Through to 2nd Round of Chapman Cup

Last night Littlethorpe 2 travelled to Hinckley for their first round match in the Chapman Cup. Overall, the two teams were approximately equal on gradings.

The results were:

D Moore (105) 0-1 Howard Phillips (119)

G Compton (101) 0-1 George Sim (100)
T Clay (83) 0-1 Colin Ross (70)
B Bailey (UG) 1-0 Ray Beach (68)

Score Hinckley 1 Littlethorpe 3

Terry Clay claimed to have lost through boredom.

After the match, Howard Phillips said 'Oh no. Now we are going to have to play a proper team'.

So, Wigston 1, bring it on!

Club Quickplay

Last night saw the return of the popular club quickplay - 5 rounds where players had 15 minutes for all of their moves. The event was limited to club members, plus the odd invited guest which gave us a turn out of 24 players. New landlords Jim and Tina kindly provided some snacks to see the players through the evening. When the dust had settled, Walter Dehnen emerged victorious with 4½/5, with Littlethorpe players Brandon Clarke and Sean Hewitt tieing for 2nd place on 4/5. Full details, including grading performance, can be found here.

Board Order Drama

There was drama last night at The Plough when, in an important relegation deciding match Braunstone had the audacity to list their players in order of strength!! After we had recovered from the shock and horror of such blatant tactics a close match ensued. In keeping with the fact that this was effectively winner takes all, there were no draws:-

board 1 Hewitt, Sean 1-0 Robinson, John
board 2 Clarke, Brandon 1-0 Salisbury, Mike
board 3 Bray, Dave 1-0 Bingham, Jim
board 4 Cowley, Mike 0-1 Colburn, Paul J
board 5 Harrison, Peter 0-1 Sandrovitch, David

League Title Up For Grabs

After dropping points against Braunstone and Loughborough recently, the match against Wigston became a must win one for us. So out came the big guns, and all fingers were crossed. Early on, things looked iffy. Graham Sharpe drew quickly with Martin Burrows and Mark Hebden looked to be in trouble when two pawns down having played the Marshall against Alan Byron. Somehow though he got back into it and managed to get a winning position, only to blunder and fortunately escape with a draw. Then Chris Jones drew with Walter Dehnen to leave the match evenly poised. Time scrambles ensued on the remaining two boards which saw Chris Gibson a pawn up against Andy Morley and Dave Bray have two pieces for a rook against Phil Horspool. Chris eventually won on time in a better position but Dave looked to be going backwards until fortunately (for us) Phil allowed his rook to be skewered and it was all over. So a comfortable victory in the end (NOT!). The rematch at the end of April should be interesting indeed!!

board 1 Hebden, Mark Drawn Byron, Alan
board 2 Sharpe, Graham Drawn Burrows, Martin
board 3 Jones, Chris Drawn Dehnen, Walter
board 4 Gibson, Chris 1-0 Morley, Andy
board 5 Bray, Dave 1-0 Horspool, Philboard

Harrod Cup Triumph 11/09/07

The first team faced Melton Mowbray on Tuesday, knowing that losing no worse than 2-6 would secure the Harrod Cup for the club for a fifth consecutive year. In the event, a 5.5-2.5 victory meant that the cup was won, with the team unbeaten during the five round campaign! Congratulations to all involved: Sean Hewitt, Andy Johnson, Howard Phillips, myself, and Richard Smith (who stood in for a couple of matches). Roll on next year!

Birstall Cup Semi-final

Unfortunately Littlethorpe 2 lost 2.5-2 against Scraptoft Valley, due to the handicap bonus they received. We won comfortably against their two lower boards and only needed a draw from the top two, on which we were in excellent positions. But it all slipped away at the last moment, with blunders from both our players, who complained afterwards of fatigue.

HEWITT & RICKETTS SENT TO COVENTRY

Last Tuesday, the Chairman and Secretary went to the Coventry League's Formation Meeting, the outcome of which, from Littlethorpe's perspective, was satisfactory. We got the three teams in, with A being in Division 1, B being in Division 2 and C in Division 3.

The B and C teams were also entered in their respective Divisional Cups, as it is thought that with only having 9 teams in the Leicestershire League, the pool of players wanting more chess will be large.

There is also a Knock-Out Cup, played on a handicap basis. The A and B teams have both drawn a Woberley team at home, whilst the C team have a trip to Newdigate, a Division 2 side.

Following the conclusion of the Formation Meeting, at which score cards were distributed (differing colours depending whether you are playing at home or away - quaint) the adjourned AGM was completed. This was interesting as two items were up for discussion: consideration of whether if a side has two teams in a Division, some attempt to equalise the strengths of the two sides should be undertaken, and whether admission of teams whose night wasn't Tuesday should be allowed. These were both discussion papers. The former is an issue as Woberley have six sides, the University have five sides and Nuneaton have four sides, in a League (including Littlethorpe) of 24 sides. There was a counterview that instead of penalising sides with more than one team in a Division, the number of Divisions should be increased. The "play on other nights than Tuesday" debate was a modernisers vs "we've always done it this way" debate.

There is clearly a modernising tendency at Committee level in the Coventry League. All power to their elbow!