Many thanks to Ken Coates, the Crowthorne 4NCL squad captain, for providing the following report on this season’s weekend 3.
With 6 rounds completed and 5 remaining Crowthorne 1 head the table following 2 wins at the weekend.
On Saturday Crowthorne eased to a 4½-1½ win against Warwickshire Select 2 setting up a top of the table clash with Ashfield 1.
Round 5 had seen Ashfield 1 beat Watford 1 leaving Ashfield as the only team on maximum points.
Paul had to jet off on the Sunday to work in the USA this week and despite losing him and being out graded we eventually won a closely contested match.
| Crowthorne 1 (average rating 1999) | Ashfield 1 (2027) |
| w | Richard Webb | 2204 | 1 – 0 | Peter Mercs | 2087 |
| b | Ken Coates | 2050 | 1 – 0 | Esteve Mateu Guiu | 2155 |
| w | Colin Purdon | 2047 | 1 – 0 | Alex Combie | 2005 |
| b | Harvey Duckers | 1990 | 1 – 0 | Andrew George | 2020 |
| w | Peter Tart | 1932 | 0.5 – 0.5 | Steven Burke | 1952 |
| b | Mark Cross | 1772 | 0 – 1 | Richard Truman | 1945 |
Richard won and nicely controlled game by gaining a positional edge early on but needed care and patience to convert for the win.
My game proved a complex struggle in which both players thought they held the advantage but my opponent played a few “sub optimal” moves under time pressure and his position collapsed.
Colin’s opponent sacrificed a piece unsoundly leaving Colin to convert two knights and several pawns against a bishop and less pawns.
Harvey’s game was a close struggle and difficult for me to assess what was going on (like most of Harvey’s games it feels) but he emerged with advantage and was able to convert the ending.
Peter, first to finish, had a solid game for once and was never worse as any point perhaps having a slight advantage until a draw was agreed after almost 4 hours.
Despite being heavily out graded Mark might even have been better at points in his game and was unfortunate to eventually lose a long game.
The top of the division 4 South table now looks like:
The full table can be found on the 4NCL web site.
The second team drew their Saturday match when their opponents defaulted bottom board but could so easily have won as James had a very good position but ended up losing.
Andrew had a good win efficiently catching his opponent’s king in the centre of the board.
John drew a competitive game which promised the full point for much of the match.
Christine won by default and because the other team did not declare the default in advance they were penalised a further point. Effectively Christine won 2 points for the team!!
Mark and Scott went down to much stronger opponents.
| Crowthorne 2 (average rating 1633) | All Anands on Deck (1805) |
| w | Mark Cross | 1772 | 0 – 1 | Simon Wilks | 2147 |
| b | Scott Leadbetter | 1757 | 0 – 1 | Tommaso Penna | 2004 |
| w | John E Upham | 1630 | 0.5 – 0.5 | Samir Samadov | 1769 |
| b | Andrew Kirby | 1637 | 1 – 0 | Antoine Divet | 1592 |
| w | James Love | 1660 | 0 – 1 | Domenico Napolitano | 1517 |
| b | Christine Coates | 1345 | 1 – def | default (-1 score) | |
| 2.5 – 2.5 |
The Sunday saw Crowthorne 2 lose to a significantly stronger team – “Throw in the Tal”. However I must mention Kim Shek’s result:
| w | Laura Davidson | 1757 | 0.5 – 0.5 | Kim Shek | 1262 |
To concede almost 500 points and draw is a phenomenal achievement and with the black pieces!!
The next weekend is 13-14 April in Daventry again and sees Crowthorne 1 heading the division with Crowthorne 2 comfortably mid table.