Oxford 4NCL

All, these were our results from tonight’s festivities:

All Oxford games have been gathered in. It wasn’t the best of evenings for the firsts, who almost lost by the maximum before K saved the whitewash with a stalemate trick. The thirds registered our third 2-2 draw in four matches, but would not have been flattered at all by a 3-1 victory. Our fourth team are putting everyone else to shame, having yet to drop even half a game point as we charge up the table.

All, these are our results from the third round of 4NCL Online.  

Skip was kept busier than usual tonight, in part with a couple of faulty game-starts, in part with an Ox3 faux pas (see next para) and in part doing Division 1 PGN. While doing that he noticed a coincidence: Arya’s game in Div 2 finished in a near-identical position to Cooper v Houska with reverse colours. It was a good win by Arya in a losing cause, and Nakul managed a draw on his debut in Ox1 against an Icelandic FM. Oxford 3 lost for the first time this season but Oxford 4 announced their arrival in Division 5 with a bang, winning by the maximum.

Games Skip has gathered 15 of our games at https://lichess.org/study/E8H5UiF1. There’s one missing, the Ox3 board 2 game: unfortunately a Lichess alarm bell went off on that game and our man was defaulted. Ho hum. I hear from the arbiters that something similar happened to someone else tonight in another part of the country.

All, these are our results from the second round just completed.

Skip has taken up K’s lichess study tip and created one containing all twelve games, all showing colour-wise from the Oxford perspective. Our three teams provided plenty of entertainment (well, they did for your skip – bear in mind he hasn’t switched on the engine):

• Ben‘s opponent produced a bishop sacrifice that looked like a quick mate. Ben did brilliantly to wriggle out of it before eventually succumbing to a king+queen fork that happened to trap the king as well. 
• Arya grabbed a couple of rather hot Q-side pawns in a super-complicated 30-move draw with IM Littlewood.
• Tim‘s game finished before team-mate Graham had reached move nine. Early opening carnage saw him pick off a rook at move 13 and the players galloped to move 40 thereafter, finishing around 8pm.
• There were swindles galore in our lower teams. Graham’s opponent appeared to have a fortress at move 42 to secure the match, but perhaps he didn’t realise he’d engineered one. All he had to do was sit there and wait. No, he got active and Graham pinched a win to square the match at 2-2.
• It was even more dramatic in Ox3, where we found ourselves 0-2 down late in the day with no prospect of wins on boards 1 & 4: Dimitrios and Sam were both a pawn down in the endgame and skip was mentally chalking up 0-4. Both miraculously turned around their endgames, Sam playing moves 31-88(!) on the increment, and somehow Ox3 have drawn 2-2. Very exciting to watch, gentlemen.

All, confirmation of our results in Round 1 just concluded:

I thought Kenneth was unfortunate not to win his endgame, he produced a nice 22 … Ne3 trick to gain the upper hand as Black. Well done to the Coles, our only iwnners on the night, while David did very well to avert a whitewash.

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An addendum, onliners: internetty-guru K has wangled a way to get all 12 games in one place here (see “chapters” box to the left of screen). Skip note-to-self: need to learn how to do that!