4NCL Online League – Season 10 – Round 2 report
Round 2 on Tuesday 24th September saw our 8 teams go into battle again.
At an individual level, with 14 wins, 2 draws and 16 losses we were struggling although we somehow converted this into 3 match wins, 3 match draws and just 2 match losses, continuing an excellent start to the season.
As in Round 1 there were a couple of defaults (one for , one against) and “wrong time controls” – hopefully things will have settled down by Round 3
Division 1
A tough battle for Wessex A against Dundee City B (one of the other 4NCL stalwarts with 6 teams this season to our 8 so we’re guaranteed a few clashes)
This one went down to the wire and after a win from Gavin and a draw from Mark, David had to finally settle for a draw in one of the last games to finish, having battled long and hard for a win, to draw the overall match 2-2.
Wessex B drew a tight match with Streatham & Brixton A 2-2 after wins from Richard & Peter – we were a bit lucky really as Richard’s opponent allowed a mate in one when in a very strong position.
Interestingly white won every game (!) – see later………….
Division 2
Our Wessex C team beat Charlton Cobras after giving them a head-start when a comms failure mean Mike didn’t know he was playing!
Wins from Jamie, Reenen & Anuhas saw us safely to the match win even with a penalty half-point deducted.
With two wins already under our belt I suspect Wessex C will do well this season as we seem to be one of the strongest teams in the division.
Division 3
Despite coming up against a B team our Wessex D team out graded their opponents and won comfortably with wins from Hugo, Arjun & Frank “super-sub” Pittman.
Our D team have two wins from two however some strong teams are in the fixture pipeline who will test us further.
Our E team won comfortably against Barnet Knights B, helped by a default win on Board 1 and further wins from Robert & Simon.
Division 4
Our F team looked to have a tough match based on grades but rose to the occasion and wins from Andrea & Ashraf secured the draw against Settle.
A great result by Andrea, out graded by 251 points, still ground his opponent down over a 96 move marathon and was pretty much the last game to finish in the league @ 21:34
Interesting to note that our Wessex B team saw all WHITE wins, Wessex F had all BLACK wins !
Division 5
| After our win in round 1 Wessex G faced strong opposition in Bishop Blunders and succumbed 4-0 – Karen was the last to finish in a hard fought & fluctuating rook ending. |
Wessex H were also out graded on every board and went down 4-0 to Worcestershire Wolfpack D – with two losses we will hopefully start to play some of the weaker teams and pick up some points.
So a good evening overall, with wins for Wessex C,D & F, draws for Wessex A & B, and losses for Wessex G & H
I imagine Round 3 will see the promotion / relegation battles start to clarify.
Stats-time
With just 2 rounds completed our 100% club is already down to just 4 people in the race for the “golden pawn”
2 – Reenen Du Toit, Jamie Doyle, Andrea Bucchi, Simon Redmill
Andrea won the “biggest upset” award with his remarkable win, beating a player graded 604 points higher !
41 different players in just 2 rounds
Keith Gregory, Wessex Captain, September 26th , 2024
