Div3: Teignmouth v South Hams
The first match of South Hams 2013 division 3 campaign saw a hard fought away match at Teignmouth. Much was expected of the club's new signing from St Albans, Phil McConnell, who had been immediately promoted to board 3. Unfortunately an uncharacteristic middle game blunder led to an early demise, and a score of 1-0 to Teignmouth.
Roy Greenhalgh managed to even the score after the donation of a piece from his opponent.
Teignmouth’s Bill Frost applied early pressure in his game against Cliff Peach, leading to the inevitable time trouble – a feature of his game that Cliff has been promising to eradicate for the last fifteen years! Although he made the time control, the resulting position was always going to be hard to recover, and the match score turned to 2-1 in the favour of the home team.
The final game of the match was the board one tussle between Norman Tidy and Ben Wilkinson. Bristling from his loss to Norman in the British Championships after reaching a clearly won position he tried very hard to repeat the feat. In a game with mistakes asunder, Norman finally turned down the chance of a certain draw to chase a victory in time trouble. With a ten minute time advantage Ben was able to claim a very lucky point, and in doing so tying the match 2-2.
Four very enjoyable games, and good start to the season.