All, our Division 3 semi-final has finished. Oxford 3 recorded this result:
Our four games are available for perusal here.
Chris took a relatively quick draw in a French Defence that turned turgid. Neil refuted his opponent’s speculative rook sacrifice; the crowd (aka Chris) were baying for mate in six with 25. Qxg6+ followed (if Chris & I agree) by Qf6+ and Qxh8+. Neil chose to hand some material back to swap queens and reach an endgame a bishop up with a HUGE passed pawn on e6. That was enough for his opponent who promptly resigned.
For a moment we were 1.5-0.5 up but Tashika’s Dragon had gone wrong somewhere – skip thinks swapping queens was the problem – and Dimitrios’s opening gambit had also gone awry. All over by 20:45 and we are OUT, but at least we took as many game points off Uxbridge A in one match as they’ve conceded in their seven previous matches!
I’ll take this opportunity to give you complete final player stats for Season 3 (including tonight’s results):
| Name | 1 | ½ | 0 | Score | Games |
| Finn, Chris | 6 | 2 | 0 | 7 | 8 |
| Idle, Oscar | 6 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 7 |
| Hertog, Alex | 5 | 0 | 2 | 5 | 7 |
| Bush, Ian | 5 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 6 |
| Cole, James | 3 | 3 | 1 | 4½ | 7 |
| Murawski, Jan | 4 | 1 | 2 | 4½ | 7 |
| Evans, Chris J | 4 | 1 | 1 | 4½ | 6 |
| Hameed, Asif | 4 | 1 | 1 | 4½ | 6 |
| Arora, Tashika | 3 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 8 |
| Wilson, Edgar | 3 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 7 |
| Staples, Neil | 3 | 2 | 0 | 4 | 5 |
| Nataraj, Nakul | 3 | 1 | 3 | 3½ | 7 |
| Zakarian, David | 2 | 3 | 2 | 3½ | 7 |
| Smallbone, Kieran D | 2 | 3 | 0 | 3½ | 5 |
| Rogan, Killian | 3 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 6 |
| Savage, Ben DM | 2 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 6 |
| Hobson, Kenneth | 3 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 5 |
| Zakarian, Dimitrios | 3 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 5 |
| Bentham, Sam | 2 | 1 | 3 | 2½ | 6 |
| Cole, Graham L | 2 | 1 | 3 | 2½ | 6 |
| Terry, Sean | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2½ | 5 |
| Cont, Arya | 2 | 1 | 0 | 2½ | 3 |
| Henbest, Kevin | 1 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 6 |
| Tselos, Ross | 1 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 3 |