Wellington chess club completed their season in Division 3 of the West Somerset League with a visit down the A38 to take on Taunton Bishops at Galmington.

The strong Taunton side had already comfortably finished as league champions before the match and team captain David Smith decided to experiment by putting teenage Ben Cooper on top board to give him the experience of competing against the opposition’s top player. Nerves may have played a part as Ben did not have the best of nights making an early significant error from which he was unable to recover.

Wellington went 2-0 behind when David Smith overlooked his opponent’s line of attack and was unable to recover. Wellington’s best performance of the night came from John Jeremiah (pictured). John often causes problems for his opponents with his unorthodox style of play and this was certainly the case here as he completely overwhelmed his tricky opponent to record Wellington’s first win of the night.

Unfortunately that was the only high point of the evening for Wellington. Any hopes Wellington had of squaring the match at 2-2 became very faint as Alan Stonebridge fell a pawn behind in his game. Alan always battles on until all hope has gone and this was the case here as Alan made his opponent work hard for the win. The pawn advantage eventually became a winning advantage as Alan eventually conceded his game to give the champions a 3-1 victory.

Wellington finished a respectable fourth in the league well in the mix with the other strong teams in the league. The club has stiff competition for league places amongst the membership with more promising young players than ever coming through and putting the club in its strongest position for a very long while.