Category: 4NCL-O Season 1

Onliners, here are some deep and meaningfulless end-of season individual statistics:

Top Scorers

Stand well back, please, for a long list of players scoring 5½: Sam, Arya & Phil N (eight games), Tashika, Kenneth, K and David (nine).

Other scores: Chris & Dimitrios scored 5/8, Nakul 4½/8, Graham 4½/9, Andrejs 4/8, Ian & Edgar 4/9, James 2½/5, Ben 2½/9 and we will tactfully stop there.

Most Wins

was 5, scored by Tashika, Sam, Phil N & both Zakarians. David’s 5 wins came in rounds 6-10 and represent our longest individual winning streak.

Drawmasters (or not)

Dimitrios’s R10 win keeps him draw-free for the season, while R10 draws for Andrejs & Ian tie them with Chris on 4 for equal drawmaster status.

While I’m on, final divisional tables have been updated online (bottom of “4NCL-O Pairings & Results” at the 4NCL homepage). When perusing, remember that all three Surbiton teams are deemed to finish 8th in their group.

Finally, many thanks to all of you for participating. We settled into a consistent squad of 18-ish players and as such, I turned ~3 potential recruits away mid-season. I was already dropping one or two of you each round and didn’t want to further deprive you of your Tuesday evening lockdown classical chess fix.

I hope to see you all in Season Two, whenever that starts; maybe we’ll expand to five teams or more? Depends on the format, of course.

All, these were our results from Round 10 just concluded. 

Games are available for perusal here, including Andrejs’s 122-move marathon.

Nakul showed us why skip isn’t playing. Skip did some “live” analysis atter 20. … Ng6, concluding that he liked 21. Bxc6+ bxc6 22. Qa6 but 22. … Qa4 and Black would be OK, so decided that a quiet move of some sort was in order. Nakul played “skip’s sequence” then produced 23. Rb4. Aaah. Carnage followed, victory being banked eight moves later. David’s win was his fifth straight, K  & Ben closing out the match comfortably. Ben’s IM opp did well to find 50. Rbe4 for the draw.

Unfortunately Ox1’s win isn’t enough to get into the play-offs, for Anglian Avengers 1 beat King’s Head 3-1. Ho hum. Still, third spot after our super-slow start is pretty good!

Ox2 at one point looked like matching the first team’s scoreline, but had to settle for four draws through gritted teeth.

Dimitrios’s game descended into utter mayhem in the space of five moves from a normal-looking Nimzo-Indian at move 10. Dust settlement left him a passer up in an endgame and he converted. Chris ended his drawing streak with an emphatic win, Black allowing mate in one at the finish. Ian cashed in a draw in a 2P+ position “making sure to avoid any cock-ups after last week”, he says!

Ox4 scored their second match draw of the season, wins coming from Phil N & Kenneth. We had a Move Of The Evening last week. Let’s have another one: Kenneth’s 18. … Na1-b3.

All, these were our results from Round 9 just concluded.   

Games are available for perusal here.

Skip had overlooked that Ox1‘s tiny tiny chance of getting into the top two was zero: Wood Green Monarchs had the pleasure of a free pass tonight. Ho hum. Ox3‘s slim play-off chances went kaput as well with a loss to high-flying Hatch-End A. Now we’ll have to look cautiously over our shoulder and try to avoid relegation to Div 5. Tie-breaks will need to be calculated carefully by your skip when he sees the Round Nine tables.

The theme for the evening seemed to be pieces getting stuck. Happily oppo pieces, not Oxford pieces, curiously all getting stuck on their respective QN5 {b4 / b5 for modernists} (Arya, Nakul & Tashika’s oppo).

James returned to action with a bang, uncorking a beauty of a tactic to pick off Black’s offside queen. David must have been disappointed Black resigned when he did, for he had the most enormous position. Odd stat: all of our board 1s finished before any of our other boards by 20:30.

Move Of The Evening: Ian’s 44. … Rg3. Sadly in a losing cause, but what a move!

All, these were our results from Round 8 just concluded.  

Games are available here.

Ben enjoyed a snappy quick win when his oppo tried a cunning zwischenzug that stranded his knight. He was done by 20:10 but wasn’t first in the division to finish: elsewhere in the country, this accident happened:

1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. e5 Bf5 4. h4 h6 5. g4 Bg6 6. h5 Bh7 7. e6 fxe6 8. Bd3 Bxd3 9. Qxd3 Nf6 10. f4 Na6 11. c3 Qc7 12. Nf3 O-O-O 13. Ne5 Rd6 14. Nd2 Rg8 15. g5 Ne8 16. Qh7 1-0

David dominated from around move 25 and it looked to your skip that his win was a matter of time. K cashed in his draw in a tricky R+P endgame to make sure. That’s four wins on the bounce for the firsts and we overtake Arkell’s Angels to move into fifth. Gonzaga A & Anglian Avengers are a point ahead, tied third.

Skip feels Ox2 were unfortunate: we could easily have won 3-1 with great positions on 2 & 3 going the other way. Ox3 didn’t really get off the ground, we were a bit outgraded and Ian’s early draw proved to keep us whitewash-free for the season.

Ox4 dropped into negative equity for most of the match (don’t ask) and it required Tashika’s defensive skills to pull the team back into the black. Just.

All, these were our results from Round 7 just concluded. 

Games are available here; I’m not sure many of you will want to look at them, it was rather a disastrous night. The fourths biit the dust hard, the tone for their match being set by Asif’s expensive misclick.

In Ox3, Chris scored a comfortable draw against his higher-rated oppo but that was the last of our joy until Kenneth salvaged a “lucky” draw (his description!). Nakul also rescued a draw in Ox2 after (skip thinks) something went awry in his French Tarrasch.

There was a moment skip thought we wouldn’t win even one game on the night until Arya found a mate and David persevered to win a long endgame thanks to his second passed d-pawn. Ox1 move to 6 points but are still 6th in the table, one point behind Arkell’s Angels.

What happens next?

Ox1, 2 and 3 have played all other teams in our groups. Rounds 8-10 are against one team from each of the other three groups. Attentive readers will remember that skip sent the full running order right at the beginning of the season and this is what’s left:

All these games count for group standings – 4NCL HQ describe this as “similar to NFL or NHL”.