The C team unfortunately fielded a default, a rare event.
It was back to Lee Mount and the upstairs barn-like space, unheated of course on a cold night, but the chess was just enough to fend off rigor mortis.
For connoisseurs of these things the openings went as follows:
1. Sicilian; 2. Ruy Lopez; 3. French; 4. Orangutan.
There were dour struggles on boards 3 and 4. Josh Blinkhorn on 2 arrived at an interesting position by the time control, turned down the draw, then grabbed a free rook in order to walk into mate. Dave Sugden's game was soon in crisis and all over in 21 moves.
The match card for the fixture was as follows:
Halifax ‘B’ – Hebden Bridge ‘C’
R .Cully 1 – 0 D. Sugden
A. Dawson 1 – 0 J. Blinkhorn
B. Wadsworth 0 – 1 S. Priest
G. Cash 0 – 1 N. Bamford
J. Nicholson 1 – 0 Default
3 – 2
Meanwhile, over at the Claremount Club on the other side of Halifax, Courier ‘B’ were visiting further horrors upon our ‘D’ team which was without it’s Captain, Danny Crampton, and also missing a player on board 2 as well as the regular board 1 player, Dave Pugh. Despite this, the team did manage to increase their board wins for the season through a win on board 3 by Tim Whelan. The score card for the game is below.
Courier ‘B’ – Hebden Bridge ‘D’
D Colledge 1 – 0 M Vorstman
J Smith 1 – 0 Default
J Whitehead 0 – 1 T. Whelan
P Jacobs 1 – 0 P Deardon
R Bottomley 1 – 0 Default
4 – 1
As a casual observer of happenings in Division 2 I should perhaps be careful about making judgements… but I’m going make one anyway! It would appear to me that, with what looks like a very high volume of defaults going on across the Division, the winners will be the team who can manage to field 5 players for all their fixtures! It will be interesting to tot up the number of defaults in the Division at the end of the season in order to assess whether this situation is becoming a significant factor the league.
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