Lancaster V Poulton 1

A close match, settled with

A close match, settled with the last two matches ending in time scramble. On board 3 Ben (perhaps because it was October?) went with the Halloween gambit, which involves sacrificing a piece. (He says he played it, with success in the Town v Gown in Cambridge against a 2200-rated opponent). However George defended well and slowly traded off pieces. At one point it looked like Ben would win back the piece by taking advantage of a pin -- but George spotted he could unpin the knight, leaving it undefended, as even though there were two ways it could be taken they both would lead to Ben being mated. On the next move he was able to swap off queens to take the win. At the start of the match James had (modestly) mentioned that Lancaster had two unrated players on boards 2 and 3 that were potentially better than he was. On board 2, David spent most of the middle game looking like he, indeed, would have preferred to play James - as Max played both very accurately and quickly. After opposite sides castling both players tried to open up lines against their opponents king. David managed this first, taking advantage of an open c file and advanced a and b pawns. But Max was able to force a trade into an endgame with even material. However, David had the advantage of trapping his opponents king on a1 with a threat of mate that tied his opponents rook to the first rank. In a tactical battle where he had to be wary of various knight forks, he managed to push two central pawns, and then when one was taken, pin and then win Max's knight and go on to win. On board 4, Om Reddy seemed to have the better position for much of the match with some form of Maroczy bind and pressure agains Kuba's pawn on d6. However, next I saw Kuba was a pawn up in an end-game and then went two pawns up with both players only having a knight with the pawns. Both players were very short of time, and as he tried to convert the win Kuba ran flagged (as his opponent only had knight and king it was a draw). On board 1, Martin seemed to have strong pressure on the queen side and particularly down the a-file. James, though, was able to break through on the king side -- winning Martin's queen for a rook. Martin then won a piece back thanks to his more active pieces and a passed pawn. This led queen and pawns versus rook, bishop and pawns. With both players only having about a minute left on their clock, playing with the queen was much easier and James first won the rook, and then forced the win with about 10 seconds left. Well done to Lancaster, and hopefully the match bodes well for a close and exciting season.

Paul Fearnhead