4NCL-O Season 5 Round 3: results

Onliners, we recorded these results tonight:

Our games are available for persual/analysis here.

Ox1: Nakul, in his board 1 debut, hoovered his opponent’s pawns in a smooth performance. Tashika mated his oppo after the h-file was opened. Edgar scored his first win for .. heck, a while! Well done, Edgar. James made the team 4-0 late-doors – without David, without K. We don’t need them next round?! Skip commends all four of you. Terrific.

Ox2: a new-look team (only one junior!) saw Graham had a repetition to halve on board 4. Jan scored an excellent win against Charlie Nettleton – he’s a strong player, so that’s a good point! We lost with Black, making us 1.5-2.5.

Ox3: we had no luck, Stroud Youngies won on boards 1 & 4 to secure a 3-1 win. This appears to end relegation chances for us, as SY were our best chance of teams in the vicinity to keep us at sixth. Ho hum.

Ox4: Amaan was quickly into the clubhouse, winning a rook. Board 2 & 3 went pear-shaped but Andrey’s game seemed to be siimlar to Nakul’s game, hoovering oppo’s pawns. Skip was nostalgic after 52. … Rxc8 – after 52. … Kxc8 53. Kc6 followed by 54. d7#. Seventeen years ago he mated IM (as was) Howell in a Rapid event similarly – though DH didn’t have the h2 pawn.