Onliners, we recorded these results tonight:
Our games are available for persual/analysis here.
No commentary tonight. Your skip really can’t present analysis after his effort (someone switched on the analysis mode, and who played six blunders in seven moves? Crikey. And I thought I was doing OK until I let him play Nxe4.) He will content himself on “well done, Graham” and “well done debutant Shambavi”.
Onliners, we recorded these results tonight:
Our games are available for persual/analysis here.
Ox1: K defended a Panov Attack. Your skip’s obsolete C-K book does not consider 13. … Nxc3 14. bxc3 Rb8 because, well, duh, obvs, it loses the a7 pawn. What does he know about modern theory? K won, on time. Nakul moved to 5/6 for the season after refuting an optimistic early Grob in the French. James, playing from somewhere in Europe, picked up a loose exchange. David calmly collected a few loose pawns & exchange then halted a desperate attack.
Ox2: not much joy as everyone was wiped out, Dima likely grumbling about “ruddy Benoni”, he & Tashika running into OTB difficulties against that opening. Tomasz averted the wipeout. Ox2 need a win by 2 points better than Hertford 1 to stay up.
Ox3: Skip must apologise for putting Ian against the Scottish wonderkid, who last round tackled GM Hebden with aplomb. Sean produced a nice tic-tac to end his game and Phil scored his first win of the season with another tic-tac. So, Ox3 are relegated? No – is a miracle on the horizon? If Trelawny’s Army do the thirds a favour and beat Catford Cosmonauts, a draw against Downend 1 sees the thirds hanging on to Div 1 status.
Ox4: Andrey quickly gobbled an exchange after his opp’s rooks got into a tangle (4½/5 for the season). Asif seems to have lost connection. Amaan reached an opposite-bishop endgame where he had the extra rook, reducing the drawish tendencies of that endgame – 4/5 for him. A loss for Simon left us 2-2; the table is updated and we’re in the same point as we would have had we won this match. Makes no difference, and promotion doesn’t look likely because “goal difference” is the first tie-break and Ox4 are way way behind on that score.
Onliners, we recorded these results tonight:
Our games are available for persual/analysis here.
Ox1: skip took his eye off the games for a few minutes and suddenly boards 1-3 had all drawn, leaving Edgar in a thriller against young Nina Pert. His huge c6 pawn plus bishop pair gave him the advantage and he converted in front of the crowd – a terrific win, troops! Blackthorne won, so we’re a point behind them with Blackthorne also having “goal-difference” and “head-to-head” advantage. We have to try and turn over Wessex & Atticus and hope they slip up.
Ox2: after White losses on 1 & 3 skip was pessistimic: Dimitrios faced a strong passer b-pawn while Jan faced a strong attack (32. Ne5, 33. Nf7+, no?). 0-4 was on the cards. No, White went wrong, dropped his knight and Jan scored a … flukey? … win that skip had long since inked “a loss”. He was pleased to employ his ink-eraser. That encouraged Dimitrios to push hard to win QN+2P v RR+2P: he won and Black scored a clean 4-0 sweep, 2-2 on the night.
Ox3: Asif was quickly off the mark with a default against a WFM. Chris extended his excellent winning run, defeating a 2100 number and Ox3 were home and hosed. A kibitzer* gasped: “did Bogdan castle queen-side?” against Sean. He did, and he won – not a stodgy draw, hmm.
* (not our regular kib – was he disappointed to miss Ian?)
Ox4: boards 2 & 3 traded defaults, Simon cashed in a draw leaving our newly-promoted top board Andrey in a one-board match. He did not disappoint, winning the match and leaving the fourth a point behind chasing Streatham B & Dundee D.
Onliners, we recorded these results tonight:
Our games are available for persual/analysis here.
Ox1: Tomasz’s opponent missed a tactic. Or two. Or more. David was the fortunate recipient of his opponent’s clock flagging while Nakul controlled his French game from start to finish. I’m going to reserve comment on our other French game!
Ox2: Sean’s opponent is RUS. It transpires that 4NCL to block RUS / BLR players, after tonight – he was good for Round 4 but he’ll disappear from the KJCA registration soon. Controversial! On the board, Sean hoovered the exchange at move 10 and that proved sufficient. The younger troops cobbled half a point and that’s the third 1½-2½ scoreline for our seconds this season. Ho hum.
Ox3: Chris drew via perpetual check against a higher-rated number. Graham drew admiring comments from our kibitzers as he converted Q+pawns v RR+(less)pawns efficiently. The kibitzer wasn’t so complimentary about Ian’s Bh2 and that resulted in 1½-2½ for the thirds. Decent effort for the team, though!
Elsewhere in Division One, the Alba skip was scored 0-0 because he played Casual. We spotted that at 19:36. Their skip was apologetic: “my fault, I had even sent multiple emails to teammates reminding them not to send unrated challenges” !! Skip would love to see the Alba post-match report.
Ox4: Asif pulled off a double(!!) Greek Gift. Skip suspects the first Gift was faulty but the second Greek Gift 23. Be3 tempted Black’s knight away from defensive duty at g4. That was fatal. Kev’s oppo similarly had a g5 knight patrolling defence – skip was pleased to see that move to e6 and allow his rooks to infiltrate via e4 and h2. Simon got into a tricky rook endgame; had White tried to move his king near c7 after c6-c7, he’d have some pressure. Thankfully White swapped the dangerous c7 pawn and Simon held easily.
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.