[games, pgn]

Potted summaries from Aidan , unpotted report from Sean.

Round 1

		WOOD GREEN HILSMARK KINGFISHER 1		6 - 2	OXFORD 1
1	w	Pert, Nicholas	2541	1 - 0	Savage, Ben DM	2296
2	b	Trent, Lawrence	2445	0 - 1	Rose, Matthew	2282
3	w	Pert, Richard G	2457	½ - ½	Milovanovic, Aleksander	2246
4	b	Hanley, Craig A	2429	1 - 0	White, Michael JR	2227
5	w	McDonald, Neil	2412	1 - 0	Rawlinson, Aidan M	2207
6	b	Martin, Andrew D	2423	1 - 0	Eckersley-Waites, Tom	2247
7	w	Rechel, Bernd	2416	1 - 0	Tidman, Sophie E	2110
8	b	Hagesaether, Ellen	2269	½ - ½	Dickinson, Tim R	2151

Average rating disadvantage: 203 ELO Points

That their board 8 was higher rated than all, but two of our players suggested it was going to be tough. In the end 6-2 proved to be strangely dissappointing as we had the two points with three games going in which we had realistic changes of more points.

• Best Result of weekend goes to Matt for continuing his excellent form with the scalp of a good IM.
• Biggest "almost" of the weekend goes to Sophie for nearly making her opponent rated 306 ELO points higher look like a patzer.
• Joint Best return-to-the-team prize goes to Alex for a quick draw with the black bits against opponent rated 211 ELO points higher.
• Excellent work also from Tim. Ben, Mike and Tom also get credit for interesting, sharp and well fought games.
• The Homer Simpson d'Oh! award - a specially minted large Zero with an indented upper section where the palmprints can be clearly delineated — and awarded in our debut season to the 'best' Div 1 performance featuring a loss against titled opposition — is picked up this by team skipper Aidan for his game against GM McDonald, where the award citation reads "for reaching an equal but unpleasant position against a GM before going downhill with a certain sad inevitability".

If you believe google maps, and being directionally challenged I have no reason not to, it would take about 2 days and 9 hours worth of driving to reach Sunningdale, near Ascot, in Berkshire, from Matagorda, in Lanzarote, part of Spain — always assuming that you could manage to stay awake for all 2,508 miles and catch the connecting boats. All of which meant that I wasn’t in contention to be present at the first appearance of an Oxford team in the prestigious first division of the 4NCL chess leagues, but thanks to the wonders of the interweb and the convenient draw which allowed Oxford 1 meet last year’s champions, I was able to pump a machine full of Euros to watch how the lads got on in their first testing outing of the 2009-10 season.

And, given the disparity in FIDE gradings and trailing 8-1 in the titled player stakes, a score of 2-6 was more than creditable, and fully justified a full-scale party at chez De Vere, Sunningdale, … … were it not for the fact, perhaps, that there was a Sunday fixture, and (I guess a bit here) that having striven for 6 years to get a team into Division 1 it would be a shame to spoil the pleasant feeling of having gotten somewhere the May before by some reckless overindulgence which would simply tend to send us back where we came from in the first place. If you see what I mean…

I mean of course, “if you see what I mean, drop me a postcard and explain it a bit more”.

In the meantime, from the comfort of the lobby of the Hotel Beatriz, the match seemed to be of the early-season, game-of-two-halves variety, with the structural excitement in the top half of the match, and the less structured struggle in the lower.

On Board 3 the traditional Oxford welcome was extended on his return to active service to Alex Milovanoic, with another dream pairing against the other Pert, Richard, and very quickly the position became critical:

Meanwhile, Board 4 was the annotator’s nightmare: a typically aggressive game featuring Michael White, playing white, and reaching this position early in a Scotch game.

But on Board 2 there was a schlock on the cards, as Matt Rose took his Vienna to the Trent and then sailed a little further up the Rhine…:

At the other end of the ranch, new skipper Aidan Rawlinson was matched against GM McDonald, and has a decision to make here:

On board 6, Tom E-W reached this position

by way of compensation, the other E-W, Adam, was wreaking havoc against titled opposition and here’s the guts of the demolition job:

Back at the match, Tim Dickinson chucked, then rescued a pawn as follows:

A. to lose a pawn… 13.Na2 Nxa2 14.Rxa2 Ba6 15.Nd3 Bc4 16.b3 Bxd5	B. … to rescue it back 21. … g5 22.Nf2 Rae8 23.Nxe4 Rxe4 24.Bxg5
Dickinson - Hagesaether

And with both sides acting as each other’s St Bernard dog, a draw was agreed after the mutual exchange of brandy tots around about time control.

This left the score at 2-4 to the grandmasters, with just two boards to play out. On Board 7, Sophie’s game had long since disabused the notion that the Exchange French is a thing of dullness, and the first set of fireworks started around about here:

This left only the top board to finish, and a draw seemed on the cards as in the diagram position it’s not clear how White can do anything constructive – his rook isn’t actually that well placed, and the Black king is holding the key to all the entry squares:

Round 2

		OXFORD 1		4½-3½	BARBICAN 4NCL 2
1	w	Eckersley-Waites, Tom	2247	0 - 1	Piper, Matthew S	2304
2	b	White, Michael JR	2227	½ - ½	Berry, Neil	2301
3	w	Savage, Ben DM	2296	1 - 0	Poobalasingam, Peter S	2312
4	b	Rawlinson, Aidan M	2207	1 - 0	Dorrington, Chris J	2262
5	w	Coleman, James	2136	½ - ½	Rogers, Jonathan W	2329
6	b	Dickinson, Tim R	2151	0 - 1	Lewis, Andrew P	2273
7	w	Tidman, Sophie E	2110	½ - ½	Coleman, David J	2244
8	b	Nitz, Tomos	2090	1 - 0	Smith, Lucy K	1722

Average rating disadvantage: 35 ELO points

Given such a paltry rating disadvantage and the previous days heroics, we went into the round with more optimism of a positive result. On the other hand their average rating was pulled down massively by their 1722 board 8, so it was up to Tomos Nitz with the black bits to make sure he cleaned up or else we'd be in trouble.

• Joint Best return-to-the-team prize goes to JC who returned to find himself playing against the opposition's best player, who had wandered down the slopes of Caissa, all the way to board 5, in search of an easier point. After a tense struggle in a queenless endgame, the draw was secured when the drawing repetition sequence was established on move 27, but only after top arbitering by Nev who was required to demonstrate the counting-to-three routine to the player of the black pieces.
• Best sportsmanship goes to Peter Poobalasingam for accepting his fate and choosing the pretty line - awesome game by Ben, total control all the way through.
• Best had-a-job-to-do-and-I-did-it award to Tom Nitz for keeping calm with the black bits and bagging us the point we needed on the bottom board.
• Biggest surprise of the round, I won a game - so thats probably me done for the season, thanks to my opponent for blundering the material out of nowhere.
• Best comment between opposition team members overrhead outside during the game "They're not going to win are they?"

On the Sunday, the relief of playing a team only about 30 FIDE points / board ahead but lacking Matt Rose, Dave Shaw and Kieran, a hard struggle lay ahead. Without the luxury of a front seat on the interweb – the powers that be in the 4NCL having decided that other people deserved a live viewing – we rely on the pgn file…

The 8-board match seemed quite quickly became a 6 board affair as our win on board 8 seemed marked from as early as move 13, while Tom E-W, pushed to top board for the day, came up with a blunder in a slightly inferior position on move 16:

On Board 2, Michael White got another hard-to-read position with the Kings Indian, and his opponent accepted his draw offer in this position:

James Coleman produced a nice hack-to-a-draw in a game I did understand a bit more of, and the concluding phase had a nice melody and tempo / beat to it:

This left us all square with four to go, and this became three-to-go when Sophie’s game ended up entertainingly drawn:

So, with three games left, we need to win two, and although Tim Dickinson lost his (in a game not yet appearing on the site), we did get to win the other two. On Board 3, Ben Savage’s adventurous opening play led to the greater chances albeit with a slightly airy king, which in turn prompted a piece sacrifice by his opponent, which was neatly refuted.

This left us all square and with Aidan initially making what seems to be an exploratory draw offer around move 17, and then gradually unwinding his position to expose if not quite infiltrate the weaknesses in White’s position. A blunder followed which simplified matters, which made the opposite bishop and rook ending a matter of fairly simple technique:

Well done the lads – said he, as he headed back to the pool with a beer.

Seani, 08 November 2009