Lytham 3 V Poulton 2

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Some positions from the match can be seen at https://poultonchess.wordpress.com/2023/01/06/poulton-vs-lytham/

Paul Fearnhead

A close match between Lytham

A close match between Lytham and Poulton, with a few games that could have gone either way, but in the end Poulton took the victory. I’m waiting for a copy of the board 1 game so will update this post once this is received. On the second board, Simon played 1 … b6 as black to try and avoid theory as much as possible which led to a fairly closed game early on. On move 13 I tried to open up the position with an e5 pawn break which was probably not ideal but we still ended up later in an endgame with queens and a knight each that was fairly even. Another mistimed pawn push by me though led to Simon going a pawn up and able to swap the queens off. The combination I was left with of king and knight was unable to control the extra passed pawn and although I lost on time trying to defend the position, Simon had a decisive edge by then anyway. On the third board Juris went two pawns up fairly early on in the game and held this advantage through to the endgame with opposite-coloured bishops. A draw was offered by Richard (and accepted by Juris) on move 55 as it looked at first glance like the two connected passed pawns for white were being controlled by the black bishop and white’s king was stuck defending the base of his other pawn island. In reality though, black didn’t have any actual threats at this point and white could have walked his king up the board to support the passed pawns and secure a victory. On board four, Matthew built up a decent advantage as black and had chances to build up a lot of pressure by focusing on the queenside for a breakthrough. As the game progressed though black's kingside got weaker and weaker from a series of pawn pushes and his king stepped up to a precarious position on the sixth rank. Once Graham got both his rooks doubled on the then half open f file, this weakness left Matthew’s king exposed, and combined with a bishop on the a2-g8 diagonal (that had been sat there most of the game) a double check led to the loss of both black’s rooks and so Matthew resigned.

Darren Pickering