Season 9, Division 2 Semi-Final

Sadly, despite some hard fought battles against a higher rated team, the semi-final didn’t go our way and we missed out on playing in the Division 2 final.

But everyone has played so well to get to this position, so plenty to still be proud of! It was a very stressful and tense evening playing, with cameras on, in a high pressure situation.

Zander was top scorer with 1.5 points, winning his first game and drawing the second, whilst both Jack and Hugo won and lost one. Michal didn’t have his best evening but has vowed to learn from it and to come back stronger. We know he will.

Hugo was really unfortunate in his first match as he disconnected from Zoom and Lichess. He lost a significant amount of time before being able to re-join, with his clock dropping to well under a minute, leaving him in a time scramble. He did well to equalize the position, but the lack of time was too much and left him with no time to think. Conversely, Jack had a time scramble in his second game and eventually lost on time. Such was the intensity of the matches.

I’m not sure where this places us overall in Division 2; I think we will have to wait and see.

Hopefully we will be 3rd as Rogue Rooks, winners of Group B in Division 2, comprehensively beat Warwickshire Bears C in the other semi-final.