
Back in January, Richard Walsh, of Lancaster chess club, arranged for Cumbria to play Greater Manchester at their club. After the match, Steve and I met Richard in the pub up the road and during the our conversation, it was suggested that we should have a friendly match between Penrith and Lancaster. We agreed on a home and away format with 8 boards and the first leg of the match was played on Saturday, July 6th at Penrith.
Eggert and Yousef picked their team up from the train station at 12:30 so they all arrived for a 1 pm start.
The teams were quite evenly matched except, perhaps, for board 1 where Jacob was nearly 200 points higher than Danny McMenamin. Danny’s preparation for the game was a little unusual, in that it involved drinking lots of alcohol the night before, so much so that he fell asleep during the game and needless to say, Jacob won.
The other games were more closely contested and I was surprised that only 3 ended in draws. We did get a couple more wins from Richard and eventually, Lewis. Unfortunately, Yousef and I were both outplayed by our opponents but we did win the match by one point. However, as this was just the first leg, we still have to keep the pressure up for the 2nd leg which is provisionally, set for July 27th at Lancaster.