The Pennine Cup.
This is an inter-county competition for teams of juniors from various northern areas. It was last held a few years ago when Northumberland defeated Cumbria to win the cup which has then languished in a display cabinet for a good while. On Saturday 6th October 2018 the Pennine Cup Under 16 junior team event was held at Ackworth School near Pontefract, West Yorkshire. This time the natch was between Yorkshire and Northumberland. So a good Northumberland team travelled down to Pontefract hoping to retain the trophy. The venue and hospitality provided by the hosts was excellent creating a good atmosphere. Yorkshire is a strong area for chess so it was expected to be a tough battle.
Round 1
John Wall 1-0 Zak Farley
Ciarian Macdonald 1-0 Bradley Triffit
Weiming Xu 0-1 Max Parkhouse
Morgan French 1-0 Aditya Krishnan
Feitong Wu 1-0 Nicholas Carden
Default 0-1
Matthew Jepson 0.5-0.5 Aaron Rich
Prachi Arora 0-1 Andrew Carden
Total 4.5 – 3.5
Round 2
John Wall 0-1 Zak Farley
Ciaran MacDonald 1-0 Max Parkhouse
Weiming Xu 0-1 Bradley Triffitt
Morgan French 0.5-0.5 Aaron Rich
Feitong Wu 0-1 Aditya Krishnan
Default 0-1
Matthew Jepson 1-0 Joshini Jeypratski
Prachi Arora 1-0 Anabel Davenport
Total 3.5 – 4.5
The scores were level after two rounds so it was decided to have a blitz decider with a fast time control.
Northumberland won this 5.5 -2.5 to retain the trophy.