Onliners, Oxford’s three teams recorded these results tonight:
Our games have been gathered in here for perusal.
Ox1: Beating Atticus A is an important result in the relegation battle. There are no easy matches from here, but hey, we’re on a winning streak of … now, let skip count … eight in a row after starting Season One with four losses on the bounce. Nakultook us all back to the mid-1970s and Karpov-Korchnoi Dragons. There was no Fischeresque “sac, sac” but there was a mate. James had a smooth win, his early b4 to indirectly defend the c5 pawn was probably a surprise to his opponent. K took a stodgy draw to secure the points.
Ox2: Not much joy for the seconds tonight – Andrejs looked like “saving the whitewash” at one point with his draw but Edgarsomehow navigated into a favourable R+P endgame and was held to a technical draw.
Ox3: Debutant Chris E galloped to a win in a Najdorf Sicilian. Skip was surprised to see Graham pick off his opponent’s a- & b- pawns, only for a White pawn to appear on a6 four moves later. Where did that come from?! Tashika won a super-hairy game to pinch the match. Skip wrote her game off at move 33 (Rxb6) but she found a lot of play from somewhere. Well done, her!
There were apparently some football matches on tonight but at least one of our spectating number found the chess much more fun: “I must say that following the lads and lass is a lot more interesting than the football!“.