4NCL Online season 5 round 2 – Wessex Results and Game

Introduction

It was another reasonable night on Tuesday for Wessex with 4 matches wins, one draw, and 3 losses, just as in round one.

Keith Gregory reports that after a couple of rounds we have just one person on 2/2 across all the teams: Richard Ursell.
On 1.5/2 there are Mark Cleary, Jamie Wilson and Adam Ursell.

We have three people with performances over 2300+ over two games, unsurprisingly all from the A team:
Mark Cleary (2394), Jamie Wilson (2374) and Gavin Lock (2336).

Results

The A team was up against very tough opposition and came away with a very creditable draw. The point was shared on all four boards, with Gavin Lock leading the way, having the better of a draw with IM Richard Pert.

The B team faired much worse, getting outplayed on all four boards and going down 0-4 in a match that on paper they might well have won.

Finally in Division 1, the C team were outrated on all boards and lost 1-3. The two draws were noteworthy as on board 1 Mike Krawczuk playing black held an FM by playing solid chess and on board 4 Bill Adaway so nearly came away with a win.

In Division 2, the D team won comfortably enough with all three wins coming from endgames a pawn or two up.

In Division 4, the E, F and G teams all won.

On paper the E team’s match was evenly balanced apart from the bottom board. The top three went 2-1 in Wessex’s favour, and so the bottom board was critical. Franz Pittman was an exchange down for no compensation for a dozen moves but clawed his way back when his opponent completely immobilised one of his own rooks (on b5 of all squares)! In the final position where his opponent resigned, Franz was winning though I suspect his opponent had not understood why. As the self-immobilisation and final position are quite interesting, I give the game with light notes at the end of the report. Anyway, well played Franz for tenacity in a difficult situation!

The F team had a large rating advantage and duly won 3-1, with Jamie Doyle eventually prevailing in a wildly fluctuating game and Edward Blanden and Graham Hillman making light work of their opponent’s mistakes.

In Division 4 the G team won in an unfortunate way. Paul Sandy, having been a pawn up, got tricked into a mating net and lost. However, the game had been set up as unrated and the 4NCL are very strict about games being played at the correct time control and rated. So for the match the game was double defaulted and the G team won 2-1 thanks to wins by John Harris and Douglas Blythe.