Lytham 1 v Preston 2

On Board 1 Jim eventually broke through William's pawn blockade with a winning tactic to skewer the Black queen to its king and force resignation..
On Board 2 John and Phil reached an endgame with rooks, knights and pawns, which traded down to knight and a few pawns each. John's outside passer gave an edge which he was able to convert.
On Board 3 Conor felt that he let his position drift out of the opening, but managed to get a knight to a strong outpost on e5, followed by a surprising retreat to c4 which kept my (Colin's) potential attack under control. An amusing position was reached with all the pieces except for a couple of knights still on the board, but where neither player felt he could make progress with his attack without creating an opening for the opponent to strike first. Is it still acceptable to say Mexican standoff? A couple of innocuous repetitions followed before the draw was agreed.
Dave and Carl had a sharp battle on board 4 which was suddenly decided by a blunder in Preston's favour.

A close match in the end, the result could have gone either way. Two Caro-Kann's on the night, it must be getting popular again!

Did not get much chance to see the other games. What I did see, were cursory glances.

Board 1 - too complicated, far above my pay-grade!
Board 2 - looked tight, but that outside passer on the a-file was always going to be a problem as it turned out. Good conversion by John.
Board 3 - looked tense, again hard to tell what was happening. At one stage looked liked a nice juicy sac on f7 was coming, but then I noticed it would not work.
Board 4 - a tense Panov Attack by Dave, I misplayed the a6 line, thinking Dave was playing Nf3, which he never did. It was all tense along the e and d files, and turned on a miscalculation by Dave which was going to lead to a lost of piece and backward pawns on the Q-side.

Great match, as always nice to play at the Lytham Ex!