4NCL Online League – Season 10 – Round 7 report
With Round 7, played on Tuesday 3rd December, the 5 divisions completed their all-play-all sections.
Spoiler alert => Wessex A was our only “top 2” team and will now go on to compete for the Division 1 title in the play-offs.
On a positive note, we had no team relegations, despite Wessex B running it to the wire!
At an individual level, we scored 17 wins, 5 draws and 10 losses which we converted to 5 match wins, 1 match draw and 2 match losses.
Apart from a mass default against our H team it all went relatively smoothly
As this is the final report of the season I’ve also included the relevant tables to show our final standings.
Division 1
Wessex A were in a “double-pointer” with Hebden Bridge 1 and won the match to clinch 2nd place in their section and entry to the Div 1 play-offs (for the 3rd season in a row)
Roland played a very sharp opening line and won in just 21 moves before 21:00 with Mark playing out a solid draw soon after. Gavin completed the match win with a typical smooth grind with the black pieces. David had a 65 move marathon, with the match already secured, pushing hard to win a rook endgame before the position suddenly swung against him,
Wessex B followed up their first win in Round 6 with another one in their “double-pointer” against Oxford 2 to “stay up”.
The match went down to the wire after a draw from Richard and a loss from Allan left us needing 2 wins from 2 to survive in Div1!
Dominic & Jaimie both rose to the challenge with Jaimie completing his win @ 21:22 – one of the last games to finish.
We actually ended up in a respectable 5th place, although 4 points adrift of 4th place.
Division 2
Wessex C only needed a draw to avoid relegation but won comfortably against a lower graded Oxford 3 team to clinch 3rd place (admittedly 4 points behind the 2nd placed team) with wins from Jamie, Anuhas & Bill plus a draw from Roger.
Anuhas had a fascinating rook endgame worthy of study in a complex position he played for a mate threat with Re7 – Shredder prefers the more pragmatic Re3+and Kg1 to blockade the h pawn for an easy win – after Re7 apparently black draws with g3 when white’s best is to play Re3+ then Re1 – all very mysterious and way beyond my paygrade !
Division 3
Wessex D out graded their opponents and won comfortably 3-1, our wins coming from Hugo, Arjun & Phil.
Phil spotted a neat tactic in his game which left black in real trouble – the black king seemed fairly safe until Ng6! left black in real trouble after fxg6, Bg6+ ke7, Qa3+….
Rather than resign he then let his clock run out so Phil had to wait nearly 33 minutes for the win – astonishingly unsporting behaviour and I will complain to their captain.
With the top 2 teams both winning we still missed out on the play-offs in 3rd place.
Wessex E were heavily out graded on all boards but Robert D & Robert H notched up draws against their stronger opponents to keep it to a 3-1 loss.
As expected, we finished mid-table in a section with a wide range of team strengths, evidenced by the 12/14 & 0/14 point scores.
Division 4
Our F team had a close match on paper although in practice we lost 3-1, our sole result coming from Gerard (a much-appreciated late substitute) who won with black.
This was actually a “double-pointer” as a match win would have seen us finish in the top 2 instead of 3rd place, narrowly missing out on the play-offs.
Division 5
| Wessex G had a battle and managed to draw 2-2 despite being outgraded on every board – our wins came from Manuel & Michal after we were already 2-0 down! |
Sadly our Wessex H opponents were a “no-show” without even a courtesy warning or apology from their captain – another complaint email from myself to follow………
This win helped Wessex H leapfrog Wessex G and finish above them in the final table, see below
So, a reasonable evening overall,
with wins for Wessex A, Wessex B, Wessex C , Wessex D & Wessex H,
a draw for Wessex G
and losses for Wessex E & Wessex F
Stats-time
With all 7 rounds completed we had a tie for the “Golden pawn” – wins from Arjun & Jamie D allowed them to share 1st place just ahead of Simon & Hugo in equal 3rd place.
5 – Arjun Pyda, Jamie Doyle
4.5 – Simon Redmill, Hugo Melling
Hugo Melling won the “biggest upset” award this round with his win, beating a player graded 193 points above him.
With Allan Pleasants making his long awaited debut we ended up having 50 players in action across the 7 rounds – an impressive 8 of these have played in all 7 rounds.
Keith Gregory, Wessex Captain, Dec 6th 2024
