Five of our club’s best juniors represented Wirral teams at the NCCU Pennine Cup in Swinton on Sunday 23 February and performed admirably.
Wirral submitted three six-board teams to the competition, which included strong opposition from Merseyside, Manchester, Oldham, Lancashire, Cumbria and even Northumberland, competing over six rounds of 25+5 rapid chess for under-18s. The Wirral squad was particularly young, with our oldest player aged 15 and youngest just 9, so there were some interesting responses when 12-year-old girls were facing off against young men with full beards!!
Wirral A comprised four Wallasey players: Thomas Moran on board 2, Joe Ledgerton on board 3, Terrence Jiang on board 4 and, following a last-minute withdrawal, Tony Leong on board 6. Despite defaulting a board in the first round, we beat Merseyside C 4-2 and then despatched Manchester C 5-1 in the second round. A tougher tie against the only Lancashire team in the competition followed in round 3. With the score 3-2 in Wirral’s favour, Thomas was four passed pawns to one down in mutual time pressure against Om Reddy Jayar (rapid rating 1772, classical rating 1817) but somehow turned it all around to win in a remarkable performance that baffled several watching coaches!
In round 4, Wirral A were paired against the only other team with three wins from three, Merseyside A. Merseyside had chosen to split their players this year into two roughly equal strength teams, in order to give other counties more of a chance, but they needn’t have bothered. Merseyside A were imperious all day, crushing all before them in a 100% performance to take the title. Sadly, Wirral A went down 5-1, but the consolation was Thomas’s win over Joel Bartlett (rapid rating 1804, classical rating 1980!) – one of only two boards Merseyside A lost all day.
In round 5, Wirral A despatched Oldham B, meaning we were in clear second place on 8 points going into the final round. The title was mathematically beyond our reach, but there were no fewer than six other teams who could take second place from us and our final round tie was against Merseyside B, who were led by the Bakhtiyorov/a siblings from Uzbekistan and, like us, had only lost to Merseyside A. It was a tall order for the young Wirral team to squeeze anything from such tough opponents but, although the bottom three boards went down, Joe won quickly and Thomas defeated Komronbek Bakhtiyorov (classical rating 1968), leaving us 3-2 down. Incredibly, Benjamin Francis on top board pulled out a dramatic win over Nodirabegim Bakhtiyorova (classical rating 2024) to secure the draw and hang onto second place over all, condemning Merseyside B to third.
Meantime, Wirral B, which contained no Wallasey players, struggled in the first half of the competition, losing three of their first four matches, but won their last two, including a derby match against Wirral C in round 5. Wirral C were chronically under-strength, defaulting bottom board in every match because of the last-minute withdrawal higher up. Wallasey’s Charlie Ren battled away valiantly on board 3 all day and picked up one of the teams two board wins in the derby match.
Overall, Wirral acquitted themselves very well, and Wallasey Chess Club can be proud of the contribution our players made: Thomas returned 5½/6, Joe 4/6, Terrence 3/6, Tony 2/5 and Charlie 1/6.