Broadstairs  3         Margate   1 

Andy Flood writes:

As a consequence of the worst flu epidemic in seven years, a slightly weakened unbeaten Broadstairs team visited second place Margate with Mike Doyle standing in at very short notice to play on board 4 . In fact he was the first to finish his game. Playing black against the higher graded John Clarke, he managed to drive his opponent’s king into the centre of the board before achieving a checkmate. Broadstairs were soon to go 2–0 up with Bob Page maintaining his 100% Hargreaves win record, going a piece up and generally outplaying Colin Gregory, his opponent on the top board. A tight game was being played out on board 3 between Andrew Flood and Paul Ruffle, a former Broadstairs player of 10 years ago who had recently returned to playing chess. With white having an advanced pawn to the 6^th rank and with perhaps a miniscule advantage, a draw was agreed which secured the Broadstairs win. The team left Paul Carfrae to play on against Margate’s Clive Le Baigue, the Broadstairs Christmas quiz champion. With Clive already a pawn up through some very clever earlier play, he subsequently went a further two pawns up. However Paul’s solid end game play was proving an obstacle and with the time control looming and just over a minute left on his clock, Clive offered a draw which was accepted.

Broadstairs  3     Woodnesborough A  1 

Reg Pidduck writes:

BOARD 4. OUR RED HOT CAPTAIN. Sarah Garrett,  playing her first game, was unlucky to come up against our red hot captain Michael Doyle and lost after eight moves with a Queen and Bishop mate. 1-0 up

BOARD 3. RELIABLE BOB. Young George also  had an early bath with Bob finishing by 8 o’ clock.  2-0 up

BOARD 2. STAR OF THE NIGHT.  What a fight young eight-year-old Oli put up against Andy. Although Andy had gone a knight up early on, Oli did not allow him to make any mistakes as Andy had to slowly find the right moves to avoid the young star coming back at him, Andy finally winning. 3-0 up

BOARD 1. WELL PREPARED STEVE. Steve and I had already drawn in our previous encounter. So we were both up for a return match. Steve had anticipated my playing a Dutch against his 1.d4 and had planned his game. For the first 24 moves I felt I was okay but needed to press and made a bad move on my 25th which Steve pounced on and from then on pounded my King all the way from f7 over to a7  finishing with a mate. Well played, Steve.

We have now played four, won three and lost one in our quest for the Walker Shield.

                                               Broadstairs  2         Folkestone   5 

David Faldon writes:

The match got off to a cold start, not surprising for early January, but after an hour or so hats and gloves could be discarded and the pieces started to fly. Nick’s game on board 2 was especially violent with sacrifices on both sides and the pieces seemingly randomly scattered in the far corners of the board – but unfortunately for Nick his opponent had played much of it before and this proved decisive in the long run. The games on boards 4 and 7 were more one-sided with white doing all the pressing. Paul (black on board 4) defended hard but in vain while Michael (white on board 7) calmly brought home the point. Andy (black on board 6) then took a draw by perpetual check against his highly-rated opponent. That left us 1½-2½ down, but at that stage we still had a real hope of getting something positive from the match. David (board 1) had a very good position and both Bob on board 3 and Richard on board 5 (playing his first game for the club) were holding on tenaciously in difficult endings. In the end, though, none of the results went our way and we lost the match 2-5. Still, not an awful result against a Folkestone team packed with strong players on the middle boards. Many thanks to everyone who played, and especially to Bob and Paul for driving. Congratulations to Folkestone on their victory. They made us feel very welcome and even provided tea!