Horsham started its campaign in two of the Sussex League divisions with inter-club team matches: Horsham 1 – Horsham 2 (in Division 1) and Horsham 4 – Horsham 5 (in Division 3). I was playing in the Horsham 1 – Horsham 2 match.
I was playing on board two as our regular boards 2 and 3 were unavailable. I had the Black pieces against Phil Stimpson. The game saw me equalize against his unorthodox opening, taking play into an endgame which was unbalanced in terms of the pawn structure, but level. Both players maneuvered for a while without achieving much on the board. However, I used up plenty of time in doing so, so that by move 25 I was starting to run short of time, while my opponent had more time on the clock. By move 30 I was already down to a couple of minutes left in the bank and so had to make my remaining moves at not a lot more than the 30 second increment. On move 33 I made a fatal misjudgement, and my opponent made no mistake in consolidating his advantage and winning very effectively.
The other results in the match had seen us obtaining one win and a couple of draws, so this meant that Horsham 1 against Horsham 2 was a 2-2 draw. It was therefore a disappointing result for Horsham 1 as well as myself, but congratulations to Horsham 2 on a fighting performance!
I give my game below with some notes.