4NCL: 21-22 March 2009
This report was prepared some time ago, but problems with my ISP have meant that I have been unable to update my web space until now. Apologies!
|
RD 7 |
|
WESSEX 1 |
v |
CELTIC TIGERS 1 |
||
|
1 |
w |
Simons,
Martin J |
2223 |
1 - 0 |
Wippermann,
Till |
2456 |
|
2 |
b |
Rutter,
Nicholas |
2187 |
1 - 0 |
Maciol,
Ryszard |
2248 |
|
3 |
w |
Lock,
Gavin R |
2243 |
½ - ½ |
Hoffmann,
Hendrik |
2211 |
|
4 |
b |
Kawuma,
Moses |
2224 |
0 - 1 |
Pedersen,
Carsten |
2161 |
|
5 |
w |
Yeo,
Michael J |
2120 |
0 - 1 |
Mueller,
Jan |
2100 |
|
6 |
b |
Jenks,
Bruce |
2134 |
0 - 1 |
Thomas,
Robert K |
2156 |
|
7 |
w |
Kawuma,
Steven |
2166 |
1 - 0 |
French,
Angus |
2115 |
|
8 |
b |
Lazarevic,
Ljubica (F) |
1775 |
1 - 0 |
Owens,
Megan (F) |
1735 |
|
|
|
|
|
4½-3½ |
|
|
This
match might have mattered if Warwickshire Select had lost and Celtic Tigers had
won. As neither event happened, the
match had no bearing on the rest of the season.
I have to
admit that having chosen our board order I expected our points to come from
Boards 3-7 including as they did, our usual Board1, the Ugandan Olympiad team,
the newly crowned Dorset champion and myself, recently returned from 18 games
in Moscow. In the event, of these only Steven won while it was Boards 1, 2 and
8 who came to our rescue. Ljubica
emerged from a 4 year retirement to make great use of the coaching in the Dutch
that she had received at 8 a.m. that morning. Nick had a fairly comfortable
position until his opponent became over-aggressive in time trouble and emerged
two pawns to the good. Bruce’s queen
took a tortuous route to e8 and he became increasingly desperate in his
attempts to gain compensation. I tried
to improve on a 1974 loss to Tony Miles.
My opponent came up with an enterprising double exchange sacrifice that
I justified by allowing mating threats forcing me to lose a rook.
3-2 up at
the time control and three positions I thought we wouldn’t lose. Martin decided to avoid his IM opponent’s
usual Budapest by wheeling out the Blackmar gambit. This turned out to be an inspired choice as
his opponent had to start thinking as early as move 5. By move 20, he had
reached a BDG player’s dream position and he wasn’t even a pawn down still:
It is
obviously tempting to drop a piece onto d6, but which one? Martin chose his rook, which allowed his
opponent to wriggle a bit after 20.Rd6 Bxd6 21.Bxd6 f5. It seems that 20.Bd6! would have been even
stronger as either the Black king gets trapped in the centre after Bxe7 or he
has to allow 20 Bd6 Bxd6 21.Rxd6 Qc7 22.c6! bxc6 23.Qc3 which is crushing. Having reached an ending two pawns up, Martin
thankfully checked that Warwickshire Select had acquired 4 points before trying
his winning plan just in case it wasn’t successful. It was!
Gavin had
had a good position but lost a pawn to some tactics. Fortunately in time-trouble he was allowed to
win it back and opposite coloured bishops gave him the draw. Moses attacked as
usual, but mislaid a pawn to reach a lost knight ending. Somehow he swapped everything off to a drawn
N+P v N ending but then blundered by putiing his king on the wrong square
allowing his opponenet to reach a won K+P position.
The
weekend witnessed a number of scenes suitable for the Private Eye cartoon strip
“Scenes You Seldom See”. (The most recent has a meeting with a caption: ”Now that our event is over, we should go
round and take down all the posters”) These included:
1)
Bruce, in response to being offered a pint: “No,
thanks – I’ll just have a half”
2)
A member of the Wessex squad attempting to use the
Health Club at 8 a.m. on Sunday. He was
thwarted – it was shut!
3)
Rawle Allicock turning up by 1 p.m. on the
Saturday. He claimed that this was a
mistake as he had meant to catch the later train. Further enquiries revealed that he had indeed
boarded the earlier train and then attempted to get off it, only to be bundled
back on board by Stewart Reuben who wanted some company for the journey. Rawle lost both his games.
|
RD 8 |
|
PANDORA'S BOX GRANTHAM |
v |
WESSEX 1 |
||
|
1 |
w |
Civin,
Tomas |
2421 |
1 - 0 |
Lock,
Gavin R |
2243 |
|
2 |
b |
Ashton,
Adam G |
2321 |
1 - 0 |
Kawuma,
Moses |
2224 |
|
3 |
w |
Burnett,
Andrew |
2202 |
½ - ½ |
Simons,
Martin J |
2223 |
|
4 |
b |
Cumbers,
Paul |
2189 |
1 - 0 |
Rutter,
Nicholas |
2187 |
|
5 |
w |
Walton,
Alan J |
2189 |
0 - 1 |
Kawuma,
Steven |
2166 |
|
6 |
b |
Burrows,
Martin P |
2206 |
½ - ½ |
Neil,
David R |
2161 |
|
7 |
w |
Birtwhistle,
Nigel |
2159 |
½ - ½ |
Yeo,
Michael J |
2120 |
|
8 |
b |
Milson,
Samuel (J) |
1955 |
1 - 0 |
Lazarevic,
Ljubica (F) |
1775 |
|
|
|
|
|
5½-2½ |
|
|
A difficult match and a
disappointing result. Some may use this as evidence that our first team is no
better than our second team who lost to the same opposition by the same score
earlier in the season. However, the “culprits”
from Pandora’s Box who conceded 2½ points on that
occasion had all been dropped for this match and replaced by new Boards 3, 6
and 8 who scored rather better!
Martin was offered an early chance
to apply his energies elsewhere. Ljubica’s
opponent caused panic by throwing his pawns forward at her castled king. Moses allowed a dangerous piece sacrifice
that left him facing Space Invader pawns.
Steven’s opponent blundered a critical pawn. Nick, having castled queenside decided to get
rid of a Black bishop on b4 by playing a3 and was surprised to find that he had
allowed Bxa3! Gavin always looked under
pressure and succumbed to a queen sacrifice. David achieved his queenside
breakthrough but chose the wrong pawn to take. My game followed various recent
Simons -Yeo encounters with the same result although I missed some chances to
do better. Promotion continues to look
elusive.
|
RD 7 |
|
OXFORD 1 |
v |
WESSEX 2 |
||
|
1 |
w |
Savage,
Ben D |
2307 |
1 - 0 |
Neil,
David R |
2161 |
|
2 |
b |
White,
Michael J R |
2252 |
0 - 1 |
de
Coverly, Roger |
2078 |
|
3 |
w |
Eckersley-Waites,
Tom |
2227 |
1 - 0 |
Pleasants,
Allan J |
2080 |
|
4 |
b |
Smallbone,
Kieran |
2237 |
1 - 0 |
Taylor-Bowd,
Phil |
2037 |
|
5 |
w |
Rawlinson,
Aidan |
2236 |
½ - ½ |
Gregory,
Keith D |
2060 |
|
6 |
b |
Shaw,
David A |
2240 |
1 - 0 |
Krawczuk,
Michael J |
2045 |
|
7 |
w |
Bruce,
Dave |
2091 |
0 - 1 |
Tunks,
Dominic |
1989 |
|
8 |
b |
Harvey,
Marcus R (J) |
1905 |
0 - 1 |
Daley,
Eugene (J) |
1689 |
|
|
|
|
|
4½-3½ |
|
|
Allan
Pleasants reports:
Our
Saturday match was against Oxford 1, who if not the highest rated team in the
league are probably the strongest team. Once again the team produced an excellent
performance and only narrowly missed out on getting a result from the match
despite being out rated by 200 pts per board. As has been the case throughout
this season the top boards struggled to get results. The pick of the results
being Roger’s game against Michael White on board 2. I think this is our first
win on either of the top two boards this season. The bottom half fared better
with wins for Dominic and Eugene. At one point I noticed that Dominic had
swapped the position of his K and Q around and my first thought was that the
board must have been set up wrong. I put it down to my jet lag, went back to my
board and shut my eyes and went to sleep. You can read what Oxford thought of
the match here.
|
RD 8 |
|
CHEDDLETON-POINTON |
v |
WESSEX 2 |
||
|
1 |
w |
Arkell,
Keith |
2510 |
1 - 0 |
Jenks,
Bruce |
2134 |
|
2 |
b |
Grooten,
Herman |
2347 |
1 - 0 |
Gregory,
Keith D |
2060 |
|
3 |
w |
Bellin,
Robert |
2389 |
1 - 0 |
de
Coverly, Roger |
2078 |
|
4 |
b |
Schuurman,
Petra (F) |
2340 |
½ - ½ |
Pleasants,
Allan J |
2080 |
|
5 |
w |
Wallace,
Paul A |
2253 |
½ - ½ |
Taylor-Bowd,
Phil |
2037 |
|
6 |
b |
Edwards,
Simon |
2029 |
0 - 1 |
Tunks,
Dominic |
1989 |
|
7 |
w |
Bennett,
Patrick |
2078 |
1 - 0 |
Krawczuk,
Michael J |
2045 |
|
8 |
b |
Bellin,
Christopher J |
1980 |
0 - 1 |
Daley,
Eugene (J) |
1689 |
|
|
|
|
|
5 - 3 |
|
|
Allan
Pleasants:
Our
first game in the Relegation pool saw us playing Cheddleton-Pointon, who fielded
the strongest 2nd Division team of the weekend against us. We were
out-rated by nearly 250 points per board. The pattern of the season continued
with us getting no change on any of the top boards. GM Keith Arkell didn’t give
Bruce any chances. I got my best result of the season and possibly should have
played out a R+B v R ending rather than go for an immediate draw as there are
some practical winning chances. Dominic and Eugene won again giving them both a
100% record for the weekend and Dominic has a chance of qualifying for the
British Championship – he has a rating performance of 2481 over 7 games against
FIDE rated players.
The
league position indicates that we still have a chance of automatically staying
up, but we will have to get at least 2 wins and a draw. This is achievable
though the next game against Celtic Tigers is going to be difficult. I’m
looking forward to an interesting last weekend of the season and hopefully we
can field as strong a team as possible and get the results we need to stay in
this division.
Last modified: April 1, 2009
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