4NCL OTB has been going for over 25 years, which has given all of the teams time to find their way into the correct divisions for their strength. But this was only the 2nd season of 4NCL on-line. Furthermore there has been a huge influx of new teams, so these are still finding their correct division.

This was Crowthorne CC’s first foray into on-line chess. Our 2 teams were placed in Divisions 5 and 6 (the lowest division).

I think Division 6 worked quite well, as it is run on a Swiss basis, so Crowthorne 2 was always playing opponents on the same number of points. However some of our matches were still quite tough. We finished 58th out of 68 teams on 4 points (1W, 2D, 4L). All of our regular 2nd team players won at least 1 game. Thanks also to Csilla who stepped in at short notice when Seyon was ill.

Our 1st team had a bumpier ride. Division 5 is split into 4 groups of 8 teams, run on an all-play-all basis. We won our group, but only had 2 opponent teams who gave us a good fight. The other 5 teams were somewhat weaker than us.
We got through to the semi-final, but then encountered a stronger team, who beat us on Tuesday (1st December).