|
|
Holiday Inn, Doncaster |
|
|
|
Apologies, dear reader, but
injecting wit and entertainment into this final
report of the season will be a significant
challenge. The stark facts are that, having lost
our two matches narrowly to strong teams on
Weekend 4 in very creditable fashion, we
extended our downward spiral to 5 matches by
losing all three matches in Weekend 5. Worse, we
managed to win only one game during the whole
weekend - but we were, admittedly, under
strength. By early Friday evening, we were still
a player short for each day.
Our sincere thanks are due to
Steve, Dave and Graham for stepping into the
breach at the last minute, as well as to John
Carleton for his superhuman recruitment efforts.
We were paired against Holmes
Chapel on the Saturday, and disaster struck
early when Steve Lloyd encountered train delays
and we had to default Board 6, a disappointing
and frustrating outcome following his efforts to
support the team in its hour of need. Shortly
after, I was felled in summary fashion after
missing an obvious combination and then the
resource that questioned its soundness.
After that, the opposition were
in a position to close the match down, and three
fairly uneventful draws were agreed on the top
boards. That left John to score our one win of
the weekend by skilfully exploiting his
advantage in a knight v French ‘bad’ bishop
ending.
Our only consolation was that I
successfully tested the 4NCL rules by claiming a
refund for the wild card fee paid for our
unavoidably delayed player, and extracting £5
from Alex. Lara commented that this was some
achievement, given his reputation for Scottish
parsimony, though I am not prepared to comment
on this slur, as Alex once threatened to give me
a ‘Glasgow Kiss’ for a similar racist jibe.
|
Rounds 9-11,
Weekend 5, 2018 |
|
Unusually, all our games
finished within the four hours, an outcome
possibly prompted by the beautiful weather.
As we had a latish meal booking, we
practised restrained pre-prandial drinking
in the bar, and then enjoyed a pleasant half
hour in the sun outside a canal-side
pub/restaurant. This was followed by an
enjoyable meal, though, as was to be the
case on the Sunday, the real ale was of
disappointing quality.
When on Sunday we faced Bradford
B, the pattern of Saturday was repeated when we
lost two early games, Graham being unable to
combat a supported monster of a passed d pawn,
and I by attacking prematurely and with
superficial insight. Boards 1, 2, and 5 were,
thereafter, fairly uneventful draws. In the
remaining game, Mike, defending an Exchange
French position, turned down two draws, but went
wrong in a minor piece ending and eventually
succumbed. As Mike never gets in time trouble, I
am not going to criticise him for going back to
his room twice to check whether Derby County had
made the play-offs.
Mike did receive his just
deserts, however, upon discovering that the
legendary Giant Cod Almighty was not on the
menu at The Strafford Arms, and he had to be
satisfied with a gargantuan filled Yorkshire
Pudding. He then had his just desserts.
Sorry – couldn’t resist. Our dining
experience was somewhat surreal in that the
restaurant’s lighting had failed, and by
8.30 we were the only party inhabiting the
murky dwelling.
On Sunday, we fielded an
arguably even weaker team against our old pals,
Jorvik, but actually achieved our best result of
the weekend, drawing five games and losing only
one. Draws on the top three boards were fairly
desultory, though Tony played a couple of
passive moves in the early opening to put
himself under early pressure before freeing his
position. Graham suffered an early space
disadvantage which eventually led to his loss,
and my more exciting game led to the agreement
of a draw between a player desperately short of
time and one desperately short of confidence,
determined not to equal a club record of three
losses in the final weekend.
If we are do ourselves justice
next season, we need to solve the perennial
problem of being unable to field teams
representative of the squad’s strength in the
final weekend. As ever, we are indebted to Lara
and Alex for their efficient and good-humoured
management of the competition and the operation
of an arcane pairing system redolent of
mysteries worthy of a masonic lodge.
In the above games you can
activate the engine analysis board by clicking
the E8 (assuming White on bottom, D1 otherwise)
shortcut square on the main chessboard.
-
explore variations by
clicking the from and to squares for the
intended move
-
click the arrow buttons to
move back/forth through the variation being
analyzed
-
click the plus button at the
right of the arrow buttons to force the
engine analysis board to auto update
following the position of the main
chessboard; this is useful for instance when
following a live broadcast; limitations:
some pages might not offer this
functionality and some browsers do not
support this functionality
-
click on the side to move
indicator to switch the side to move; this
is useful to check for threats in the given
position
-
click on the principal
variation to execute its first move on the
engine analysis board
-
click on the evaluation mark
to activate/deactivate the engine
|