This season's county championship matches are underway, with defeats for the Open and U160 teams against our neighbours Yorkshire. These matches took place simultaneously at Heywood on 21st February 2016.
U160 Section
| Lancashire | Yorkshire | |||||
| Board | PLAYER | grade | score | score | PLAYER | grade |
| 1 | Pennington, Geoffrey | 157 | 1 | 0 | Patrick, David | 158 |
| 2 | Chapman, P Roger | 156 | 0 | 1 | Round, Jonathan | 154 |
| 3 | Tillotson, Carl A | 153 | 0 | 1 | Johnson, Paul | 154 |
| 4 | Addison, John | 133 | 0 | 1 | Procter, Colin | 150 |
| 5 | Quinn, Kenny | 151 | 1 | 0 | Ashdown, Michael | 151 |
| 6 | Carrington, James | 149 | 0 | 1 | Jones, Rupert | 156 |
| 7 | Tokeley, Rob | 148 | 1 | 0 | Veretennikov, Alexander | 144 |
| 8 | Raynor, Philip N | 148 | 1 | 0 | Boothman, William | 150 |
| 9 | Whitfield, John | 141 | 0 | 1 | Mason, Peter | 147 |
| 10 | O'Rourke, William | 144 | ½ | ½ | Grobler, Dave | 133 |
| 11 | Praeger, Harry | 143 | ½ | ½ | Mills, David | 136 |
| 12 | Almond, Dave | 129 | ½ | ½ | Grice, Alec | 130 |
| total | 5½ | 6½ | total | |||
Report from Lancashire's U160 Captain, Bill O'Rourke
First of all, many thanks to all of you who played today. We lost 5.5-6.5 - and I can't help feeling we were lucky to escape with that!
45 minutes after play started, their board 4 approached me and said "I haven't got an opponent" I looked at where we had designated board 4 and we had a player sat there. "No" he replied "we swapped the boards around". Anybody care to tell the opposing captain (me), who was running around making sure everybody had food and drink?
Starting up my mobile (switched off for the match) I saw a message from Steve Ward. His car was on the home drive and would not start. I tried to phone him - constantly engaged. Dashed home, tried to e-mail. When I got through, the RAC was on the car but there was no way Steve was going to make it. Phoned about 5-6 local players asking would they play at last minute, John Addison very thankfully agreed to play. Sadly when he arrived he had only 30 minutes left for 40 moves against his opponent's 2 hours. Even worse, his opponent played quickly (23 moves completed in 17 minutes) and John's flag fell in a much inferior position. 0-1.
My opponent offered me a draw, commenting it was not fair I had lost 40 minutes on the clock. Draw agree in a level position. 0.5-1.5. Harry Praeger offered a draw in a level position on board 11, followed similarly by Dave Almond on board 12, 1.5-2.5.
Things deteriorated from here pretty rapidly. James Carrington's opponent lodged a pawn at d6 that paralysed James' position, soon 1.5-3.5. Roger had missed a tactic that dropped the exchange, his opponent simplified into a won ending, 1.5-4.5. Carl had lost the exchange in a splintered pawns game, his opponent got a monster rook pawn rolling that could not be stopped, 1.5-5.5.
A very good win from Kenny Quinn momentarily delayed the inevitable. John Whitfield had been involved in a sharp game, the exchange up but his king was caught in the centre and his queen out of play on the kingside. His opponent combined threats from Queen, Rook, Bishop and Knight, 2.5-6.5 and Yorkshire had won.
Which was a great pity, Geoff Pennington had uncorked a spectacular interference sacrifice that essentially won queen for bishop and the game, 3.5-6.5. Rob Tokeley excellently combined tactical threats to win piece after piece and his game, 4.5-6.5. Likewise, Phil Raynor had a firm grip in the centre and after a few tactical strokes he had won, 5.5-6.5.
This sadly continued a losing streak against Yorkshire at u160 level that we must prevent lengthening next season!
We have a match against Cumbria in Lancaster in late March that we badly need to blow away some cobwebs before the national stage in May!!