Lytham 3 v Lytham 4

All square in a close match between Lytham 3 & 4 teams.

My game on board 1 ended with a draw agreed after 18 moves. At this point pieces had been traded off and the pawn structure was completely symmetrical so it didn’t look like either side would make any progress by playing on.

On board 2, Colin got the edge early on going the exchange up, a knight for a rook. However, Richard fought back and started to take advantage of black’s weakened king, with a bishop and queen bearing down on the diagonals and kingside pawns storming the position. The game was back and forth from that point on, with both sides missing chances to get a decisive advantage, but as pieces got traded it ended up in an endgame with black having 3 isolated pawns, and white 1 pawn and a bishop. With only seconds left on his clock Richard offered a draw and this was accepted by Colin.

On board 3, it was a close game for a long time but towards the end, when each side had only a rook and queen left, Pat managed to get his pieces much more active and capture white’s queenside pawns whilst still defending his king from any threats. After a forced exchange of pieces, this left a passed pawn for black that couldn’t be stopped from promoting from a king that was two far away and an easy win from that point.

On the final board, black got the g & h pawns for a knight and opened up white’s king. White was still slightly better immediately after this as there was no immediate attack, but Graham never managed to consolidate the position and get his king safe and eventually black got enough pieces into the attack to threaten an unstoppable mate.

New player on board 4 = Charles McNab