Western Counties Championship – Dorset and Wiltshire Lose

Dorset County League website

Ian Clark sends the following report on the Dorset & Wiltshire vs Gloucestershire online match played on Sunday 10th Jan.

Match Report

This was the first Dorset county match of any description for about 15 years with a combined team of 6 from Wilts and 10 from Dorset.

The match did not go very well! Looking at individual points won, Wiltshire won 3.5 points out of 6 and Dorset 1.5 out of 10 – room for improvement.

There were a couple of issues at the start, one reminding one of our Dorset players (and well done Tim Joyce who was late to the game but did win) and the other due to a mess up of email addresses from your Captain –sorry to Richard Ursell.

The games were underway and within about 20 minutes we were 5-0 down. I should have reminded players that it was a long match and not blitz which most are used to playing online.

There were a lot of close games but we seem just to come out second. On top board Allan Pleasants had a good game (given at the end of this article) against a strong opponent and although considerably down on time battled away in a double rook ending and managed a draw, even missing one chance of winning.

The game on board 3 was very exciting with Gorgun Aliriza throwing all his pieces into the attack but just run out of attacking material before he could deliver mate.

There was a major problem towards the end of the matches in that the Lichess system froze and whoever move it was lost on time because no moves could be made. It turned out that there was a Lichess upgrade. This resulted in a few problems and confusion but was mainly sorted amicably the next day.

The final score was Gloucestershire 11 against 5 for Dorset & Wilts.

I hope that come the next match on 7th February against Somerset these glitches will be sorted and we can just play chess. The players in squad who did not play will get a chance in next match.

Captain Clark

Scorecard

Dorset & Wilts Gloucestershire
Board Name Rating Score Name Rating Score
1 Pleasants Allan 2069 0.5 Joey Stewart 2245 0.5
2 Alliss Richard 2050 0 Duncan Dicks 2176 1
3 Gorgun Aliriza 2043 0 Mike Ashworth 2149 1
4 Weatherlake John 1887 0 John Jenkins 2083 1
5 Adaway Bill 1881 0 Amogh Sarpoldar 2000 1
6 Burton Ron 1848 0 Alistair McNaughton 1945 1
7 Georgiou George 1848 1 Aron Saunders 1876 0
8 Headlong Fenella 1788 0.5 Rob Ashworth 1857 0.5
9 Ursell Richard 1788 0 Adrian Walker 1762 1
10 Leeson Chris 1784 0 Graham Brown 1732 1
11 Lundin Terje 1765 0 Indy Southcott Moyers 1655 1
12 Joyce Tim 1698 1 Matt Reekie-Black 1608 0
13 Parsons David 1638 1 Ainsley Killie 1601 0
14 Doyle Jamie 1624 0 Alex Carey 1505 1
15 Owen Phil 1555 1 Kevin Markey 1466 0
16 Burton Louis 1248 0 Angar Sarpotdar 1396 1
5.0 11.0

Game

Allan is up against tough opposition and comes away with a very creditable draw, and was so close to coming away with more. The game features a really interesting and fiddly endgame.

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