Onliners, we recorded these results tonight, with 1½-2½ being a popular match scoreline:
Our games are available for persual/analysis here.
Start at the bottom with Ox4: Amaan posted our first point of the new season after his opponent’s pawns went into voluntary isolation and his knights ran riot. Debutant Andrey quickly got to grips with the format and benefitted from his opponent leaving a knight en prise. Alex pinched a lucky win when his opponent got careless.
Ox3: we were perhaps a bit pessimistic about our general Div 1 chances as skip grumbled “GYG, Catford, Alba, Broadland all in the same pool”. It seems skip misread Alba, they aren’t the Alba he thought they were (although they do have that scary kid Freddy Gordon), and average ratings in general mean there is some chance of staying up. Round 2 is the dreaded match against GYG but after that, maybe we can nick a win or two?
Ox2: Jan’s winning run came to an end with a 16-move draw against the experienced Andrew Stone. Tashika attracted a kibitzer’s attention when a pawn grab became possible at move 23. Was it on? Skip thought so, but wasn’t sure. Still, she nobbled the pawn later at move 31 as wBa1 was a tactical liability, and nobbled the bishop at move 40. Terrific win for her – well done! After Dimitrios lost a difficult R+P endgame, this left Kenneth whose king marched from g8 to e1 over the course of ten moves in the middlegame. Ooo-er. Her Maj had to sacrifice herself to save His and that was that.
Ox1: David’s 32. Bxg7, 33. Bh6 was a neat trick for a draw. After solid-ish draws from James & Nakul (not that skip knows what on earth was going on) Blackthorne took the points when Edgar lost. Still, we improved on last season’s 1-3 against the same oppo at the start of last season. Maybe we can score up 2-2 next season in Round One?