4NCL: 23-24 September 2000

Saturday 23 September

This match was quite bizarre as we didn't discover we had won until two days after it had finished! I had spotted the two tell-tale asterisks in the opposition's team list, but had assumed that our captain had given them permission to play an extra wildcard. (Most of the Wessex team are nice like that - I'm the exception). It was only at a subdued dinner on Saturday night that I found out that I was the only member of our team who had noticed. Even then, it wasn't until Monday that we discovered that the controllers had already declared Board 4 as a win for us before the start of play. It would have been helpful if we had found out about it earlier!

The match started quite well as Emily won comfortably, and the Davids both drew with Black. Reporting restrictions unfortunately mean that I am unable to eulogise about events on Board 1, but we thought we were 3-1 up and cruising. (In fact, of course, we were 4-1 up and really were cruising). Rob's opponent grabbed a very hot pawn. Judging by his body language, I'm not convinced he had seen how hot it was, but he managed to wriggle out with R,B and P for a Q. Rob continued playing for a win for just too long, but should probably still have drawn easily after his draw offer was turned down. A groaning noise on my left signalled the end. My game had been looking difficult, but improved a lot in my opponent's time-trouble (although he missed a 2 move win). Unfortunately, the Q+P v Q ending I reached turned out to have a forced drawing line and he found it. Ian had a long attempt to win a R+B ending with an extra pawn, but his opponent defended very well. Martin had a reasonable opening, but a faulty plan left him in a bad ending with N+P for a R and his opponent found some neat ways to break through. We were rather disappointed with a scoreline of 4-4 - little did we know...!

Sunday 24 September

This match got off to a rather slow start. Rob had done his best the previous evening to encourage the opposition in their attempts to drink Birmingham dry so at 11o'clock there were just 5 Wessex players present (fortunately including all the players with white). Gradually everyone else drifted in except for Rob's opponent. At 11.25 Rob decided he was in urgent need of some breakfast - unfortunately his opponent turned up just after he left. At about 11.50, someone had the bright idea of going to find Rob to get him to make a move. By this time, his opponent had disappeared, but by about 12.15 both players were able to shake hands. A short time later they repeated the action!

Unusually, NW Eagles had kept their board order similar to the previous round, merely swapping boards 2 and 4. We indulged in a rather more radical restructuring reverting to the same top three boards as in our first matches back in 1996! Emily was on Board 8 then as well, but in the meantime boards 4-7 have gone up by an average 300 ELO points (in those days it was Noyce, Tunks, Marsh and Carey).

Emily's game transposed into a Classical French where she committed the crime of playing c5 without playing a6 thus allowing her opponent's knight free passage from c3 to b5 to d6. Somehow she drew. Reporting restrictions mean that if something had happened on Board 5 I would be unable to tell you about it. Nothing did. The Davids both lost with White leaving us 3½-1½ down with the same players as Saturday left to fight on. My game was looking increasingly difficult until my opponent won the exchange. The combination of my two bishops and his time trouble led to him having to give up a piece to avoid being mated. Meanwhile, with about 5 minutes left each Martin's opponent offered a draw in a position where he was slightly better. A long thought, and a check on the score left Martin with about a minute for 14 moves. He had only made 3 of them when his opponent had to point out that Martin's last move had delivered checkmate - something that both players had overlooked! This left our captain for the second day running in a R+B ending, but this time he had a pawn less. Only his chauffeur Rob was left to see the grim defense finally overcome at 5.45.

Last modified: September 29, 2000