Lancaster 'A' V Bare Village

Not as one-sided as it might seem

A tightly-fought match which final result flattered Lancaster a bit: a repeat of the previous week's league match-up but the games were real contests. Niko won a pawn in the middlegame but Doug correctly took the game to one of those on-the-wire K&P endgames in which the extra pawn was largely irrelevant, and Niko had to calculate carefully to win by a single tempo. Iain's win against Graham came soon afterwards, and though I didn't see how it came about it was possibly the smoothest of Lancaster's wins. Andre had a hatful of pawns for a piece and Danny had to work hard eventually to make his more active pieces tell with an overwhelming assault on the black king. My game against Phil was another tough tussle: a couple of inaccuracies left Black with a +2 advantage by move 16, but Phil defended with typical stubbornness and I had to work hard to avoid his tricks and nurse the advantage through some mazy complications. Phil was a piece down by the time his flag fell, but it had been squeaky-bum time throughout.

Barry Hymer