Lytham 1 v Preston 1

It's always a pleasure to offer our friends from Preston a warm welcome to Lytham, though in truth the venue can be every bit as chilly as Jalgos in the dark depths of January.

Apologies for this abbreviated report, which is entirely Malcolm's fault for keeping me glued to our board for almost the entire match....

Anyway, I was aware that Graham chalked up the first point for Preston. Phil told me afterwards that he'd suffered from playing too defensively and failing to activate his pieces sufficiently. Graham took full advantage.

Dave and Alan both apparently used up a lot of time in a sharp opening and seemed equally happy to call it a draw after the initial fireworks fizzled out.

Malcolm's early pawn expansion left his queenside minor pieces looking rather unhappy and cramped, but he somehow manoeuvred them to eventually see the light of day (surely there must have been some way for me to prevent this?!). Then a neat tactic that I'd overlooked won a pawn, and with pieces then exchanged down to only a queen, knight and a few pawns each, it was only a question of whether Malcolm would have to settle for a perpetual as the clocks ticked down. The answer was no, as he delivered mate the move before the time control.

The highest quality game of the night (indulge me!) was on board 1, where William managed to maintain a time advantage while defending stoutly against Brett's initiative on the board. This eventually proved critical, as a lack of time undoubtedly led to Brett missing the key continuation, and at the death played his moves in the wrong order to suddenly concede the game.

Congratulations to Preston on a hard-fought and well deserved win.