Maryport A brought a very strong team to the Crown on Saturday, to play our A team in, possibly, the most important match of the season. With both Alice and Eggert unavailable for this match, I was concerned that we might not be able to field a strong enough team to win this match. Fortunately, Jacob had that day off work and offered to play.
The match, as expected, turned out to be very close with Roger Hart, playing with white on board 1 for Maryport, electing to forgo his usual Blackmar-Diemer Gambit opening for a Reversed Modern setup. This proved to be a good decision as Jacob used a lot of time trying to gain a tempo that might allow him to mount an attack but Roger held his position and Jacob, short of time, settled for a draw.
Some time passed before the next result, when Board 2 went against the run of play, with a win For Greg Millar against Holden. Holden applied pressure on Greg from the word go but somehow, Greg found the best responses and eventually managed to exchange off most of the pieces, leaving a knight each and several pawns. Unfortunately for Holden, Greg had a passed ‘a’ pawn which, although quite away off the queening square, proved impossible to stop when Greg placed his knight preventing Holden’s from interfering.
On board 3, Dave, despite playing with the black pieces, seemed to have a slight advantage in the endgame against Matthew Haworth. Of course, by now Dave realised that in order to win the match, he would have to win but after a few more moves, it became clear that this was very unlikely and a draw was agreed.
Michael, on board 4 against Neil Jones, was now well aware that he needed to win in order to save the match but he was getting low on time. Neil, knowing that a draw would win for Maryport, offered a draw. Michael played on but when Neil forced the exchange of queens, it became clear that a win was not an option for Michael and that game too was a draw.
A great match but sadly, our A team were defeated. The last time that happened was November 2023 when our B team were the victors. Congratulations to Maryport A who, incidentally, have not lost a single game in 4 matches and must now be favourites for the league title.
The current positions are shown below:
