Horsham 3 beat Woodpushers by 1 second

My own game on board 5 finished fairly quickly with an agreed draw, both our kings had little cover and unwilling to push too hard. Peters game on Board 1 looked equal for a long time with pieces slowly coming off but he managed to gain an advantage with aggressive knight manoeuvres to have a slightly stronger king/pawn end game which he expertly played out until the 42nd move where it was clear he’d queen and win. Soon after Alex had won his after facing a king side pawn storm his opponent ran out of support, pushed too hard and Alex calmly kept control. Ian on board 4 was facing trouble with several pieces offside to the defence of his king and spent a huge amount of time thinking he way out of it, so much so he had 8 minutes to play the last 20 moves! Somehow he managed time control (3 seconds to spare) but with left with uncoordinated pieces he sensibly resigned the position. This left us with 2.5 points and Chris still playing, he’d been on the back foot with a moved king early on and although he managed to free his position had to give up the bishop pair and was facing a very strong pawn centre. After the queens came off and into a rook end game he was running fast out of time and made his last move with 1 second on the clock! The position was not great but was shown to be a dead draw picking up the win for Horsham 3-2.

1 176 Hutchings, Roger M 0 - 1 Harbott, Peter 165
2 161 Samworth-Calvier, Juju 0 - 1 Taylor, Alex B 159
3 159 Briggs, Andrew J ½ - ½ Heath, Chris W 163
4 159 Kelly, Ian G 1 - 0 Comley, Ian S 162
5 143 Coleman, Frederick ½ - ½ Richardson, Paul 151