4NCL OTB Final 2021-22 Weekend – Poole and Wessex Results

After a long gap the fourth and final weekend for Division 3 South of the 2021/2022 OTB season took place on 25th and 26th June, with Wessex A, Wessex B, Wessex C and Poole taking part.

The results were mixed:

Poole lost both its matches
Wessex A drew both its matches
Wessex B won both its matches
Wessex C won one and lost one, though it was a bit more complicated than that!

In the final weekend there were an odd number of teams in the division. To give everyone a match the organisers found a very creative solution for the matches on Saturday and a different creative solution for Sunday!

On the Saturday instead of playing 6 board matches the bottom three teams each played two 3 board matches against each other in a mini round robin. The included Wessex C, who played 3 boards against Watford B and 3 boards against Cambridge University 3 (and Watford and Cambridge played each other over 3 boards too).
On the Sunday the round robin approach was adopted again for the bottom teams, but this time with 6 boards with each team member playing twice (presumably over a quicker time limit). The Sunday scores were used for the results table and seemingly Saturday’s match scores were ignored.

The detailed results are below.

At the end of the season, Wessex A ended up 5th, Wessex B 8th, Poole 19th and Wessex C 28th. You can see the full table here.

For the 2022-23 season it is intended to reorganise the divisions back to how they were before COVID. So instead of a combined Division 1 & 2 Swiss pool and what has effectively been a combined Division 3 & 4 Swiss pool for the south (though it was called just Division 3), there will be normal divisions of 12 teams. What this appears to mean is that Wessex A and B did well enough to stay in Division 3, whilst Poole and Wessex C will be in Division 4. However, there is a rule that two teams from the same squad cannot both be Division 3 together, so seemingly Wessex B will be placed in Division 4 too.