Promoted despite crushing defeat

Birmingham League Division 3

Lichfield went down to a 5-1 defeat against Division Three championship leaders University yet will finish in second place after a fine season. This season’s star performer for B5 Adam Routledge was amongst the Lichfield contingent who were beaten after hard games. Adam’s opponent had a spacial advantage in the opening and after that was always on the back foot.

John Staniforth, Tony Green and Peter Rose were the other losers while Mike Hoare and David Pickering drew after tough games, David Pickering described his game as a genuine draw.David’s opponent played the Caro-Kann with g6 and a delayed dxe4 forcing him to respond with giving back Bishop for the f5 Knight to get a better pawn structure with his opponent having play on the long disagonal. Even after his opponent brought his g7 Bishop out to be exchanged and his Queen to B2 David could see nothing better than repeating moves by retreating Rook to d1 to break a pin on the e1 Rook. (Matxch played 26th March)