Paul Barber was an mpressive winner of the York Lightning Tournament held at the Railway Institute.

He comlpetely demolished the 18-strong field to finish with 5.5 points from six games, a full point ahead of second place Herbert Lockwood. Richard Hardy and Aaron Barker were joint third on four points.

In the York Evening League Cavaliers 'A' maintained their lead in the first divison with a 4-2 win over Lady Anne Middleton I.

Cavaliers 'A' had the perfect start well when Paul Hopwood won after five minutes and never looked back.

There were further wins from Peter Cloudsdale and Owen Robson and draws between Jim Shemilt and Tim Turner and Richard Hardy and John Cawston. Jon Griffith was the only winner for LAM.

The leaders' only challengers, University slipped up against Minster Inn and now seem condemned to second place.

The match was tied at 2.5 points each with only the top board game left and University's Almas Ermekov was the exchange up.

Unfortunately he allowed Paul

O'Neill to fork his king and rook to win the piece, the game and the match.

Earlier Steve Whitehead had won for Minster and Richard Mounce for University and there were draws between Mark White and Scott Fraser, Adam Ismail and Mark Kambites and Les Bresnan and debutant Kurt Schuller.

University bounced back the following week when they demolished Cavaliers 'B' by five points to one.

Cavaliers 'B' inexcuseably defaulted boards two and three and there were wins from Richard Mounce and Keith Kuan and draws between Mark Kambites and Paul Johnson and Emanuelle Libertini and John Goodfellow.

A full-strength Shepherds team easily defeated Kings by five points to one with wins from Barry Marshall, Eric Key, Nigel Dowker and Kan Filiz, plus draws from Keith Goodey against Peter Blacker and Andy Tyrell against Rodney Mitchinson.

In the Second Divison LAM II replaced Shepherds II at the top of the table after they defeated them by four points to two.

Updated: 11:59 Thursday, February 14, 2002