Preston 1 V Poulton 1

Press / Admin Comment

The Combatants on board 4 didn’t have a stress free time leading up to this match. Alan lost the electrics at his home address. Peter was defaulted a game at the Malaga Open for reading a book during one of his games. How cool is that ! The reading of the book that is, not the arbiter’s actions. Board 1 was first to finish. Brett explained that a series of piece exchanges early on resulted in an equal position where neither player could gain an advantage. On board 4 Peter had opened up the h file and eventually doubled his rooks there creating strong threats. Alan had a rook on the open b file and there was potential pressure on black’s queenside castled King. Alan cleverly placed a bishop on e7 which had the dual advantage of protecting a pawn on h4 and hampering black’s efforts to get his king safe. Once Alan had doubled his rooks on the b file he delivered mate on b8 to extend his unbeaten run this season. In my game Jakub defended well against some early pressure and slowly manoeuvred his pieces into good positions winning a pawn. Despite his pressure maybe there was light at the end of the tunnel as I saw some opportunities to create threats against the white king. However these perceived threats were only illusory and ephemeral – the light was actually from a dangerous oncoming train. Jakub’s attack was proving too much. I failed to make the 35th move before the time control but as Jakub was about to win a second pawn I was probably lost anyway. To continue the train analogy I phoned the Samaritans and told them I was going to throw myself under a train. They told me to stay on the line. Malcolm won a pawn early on and in an attempt to create some counter-play Ben then lost a piece. In the final position Malcolm was a knight and two pawns up. A knight fork on Black’s king and rook settled the game. A competitive evening and close game. Poulton and Preston meet again on Monday 24th April 2023, both teams having battled successfully through numerous rounds over many months to reach the cup semi-final.

Graham Ashcroft