The 2nd leg of the Coma Cup II was held at the Crown, Eamont Bridge on Saturday. The Coma Cup, so called because Lancaster’s board 1 fell asleep at the board last year, is a 2 leg competition between Penrith and Lancaster, played over 8 boards.
The match got under way at 1 pm with Penrith, as the home team, playing black on odd boards. Penrith had four changes to the team that played last week at Lancaster. Holden, Lewis, Cameron and Mike Clementson were unavailable for this game which meant that Michael, Steve, Nathan and Richard, who were all unavailable for the match at Lancaster, got to play. Unfortunately, without Holden, three of us had to move up a board and face tougher opponents.
As I was concentrating on my own game for most of the match, I didn’t notice who finished in what order but despite all the games seeming very close, the results showed the match slipping away from us.
We did have two winners, this time, Michael and Richard, who didn’t play last week, both won their games but apart from a tough draw for Eggert against Danny McMenanmin, we lost the remaining 5 games.
There was one game that stood out, for all the wrong reasons, which looked like a guaranteed win for Penrith. Dave, on board 8, had a pawn advantage in a king and pawns endgame, and for a change, had plenty of time. He played perfectly and promoted to a queen on f8. Dave, on his next move took a pawn on h6 that was blocking his own pawn on h5. Meanwhile, his opponent, Jonathan Verden, played his a3 pawn to a2 and having a pawn on c2 which was protected by his king on c3, looked certain to promote but had Dave played Qc1, it would have been game over as Jonathan wouldn’t be able to get a queen eg. 1….a1Q 2. Qxa1 Kd2, 3. h6 c1Q+ 4. Qxc1+ Kxc1 5. h7 and with no more pawns, Jonathan would surely have resigned but unfortunately, Dave didn’t see this and tried to stop the pawns by checking which, eventually, led to Dave using up his time and losing the game.
Congratulations to Richard and his team. The final score was Penrith 2½ – 5½ Lancaster which added to last week’s score line, makes Lancaster this year’s winners of the Coma Cup by a score of 10½ – 5½. I guess we are going to have to try harder next year.
