Author Archives: crowword

4NCL on-line season 2 summary

Posted on by

Many thanks to George Green, Crowthorne Chess CLub’s 4NCL on-line captain, for providing this summary.

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).

I believe that placed us 4th out of 32 teams (TBC as the 4NCL tie break rules are a bit beyond me). We have been promoted to Division 4.

The response to my request for players was good each time (thanks – makes the captain’s job easier), so I was able to spread the games around quite fairly with each of us playing 4, 5 or 6 games.

Crowthorne Online 4NCL Results Round 5

Posted on by

Here are the results from Round 5 of the Online 4NCL competition, played yesterday (October 20th).
Crowthorne 1 beat the 2nd strongest team in the division, so we remain clearly in 1st place in Division 5.
Crowthorne 2 had a harder time of it, and lost their match 0.5 – 3.5

Full results and tables can be found on the 4NCL web site

Crowthorne Online 4NCL Results Round 3

Posted on by

Crowthorne 1 again won their match 4-0 in the 3rd round of the 4NCL Online League. Our next match in 2 weeks’ time is against Bude Surfers, who had John Nunn on board 1 this week!

Crowthorne 2 managed their first draw this time:

Crowthorne 2 4NCL Round 3 Match Card

Full results for the current online season (Season 2) can be found on the 4NCL website. Crowthorne 1 & 2 play in divisions 5 and 6 respectively.

Crowthorne Online 4NCL Results

Posted on by

The 2nd round of the 4NCL On-line tournament took place this week. 

Once again the Crowthorne 1 team won 4-0. We lead our section. Our key match will be against the other strong team in our section (Farnham A) on October 20th. It is probable that the winner of that match will go through to the play offs for promotion. 

Crowthorne 2 did better than in round 1 but still lost. We perhaps had higher expectations before the match based on the 4NCL gradings, but we subsequently understood that our opponents were a team of Scottish juniors with very few ECF graded games to their names. Their lichess grades were somewhat higher. In round 3 we’ll be paired against a team with 2 losses! 

Richard Webb wins the Khyber Cup

Posted on by

Congratulations to Richard for winning the Khyber Cup this year. This year the event was held online, using a slightly faster time control of 10m+5s for the entire game rather than the traditional 20m+10s used for the over the board event. Thanks are due to Jonathan Welton, who organised the event using lichess.org as the platform.

Richard won the 5 round Swiss tournament with 4.5 points, a full point ahead of Harvey Duckers and Mark Taylor, who shared second place with 3.5 points.

Full details of the tournament can be found at the event on lichess.org.

Richard’s best game was probably his first round encounter against Jonathan. Jonathan got a slightly passive position out of the opening, and it is impressive to see how Richard managed to gradually increase his advantage to a winning one, whilst giving his opponent virtually no counterplay, despite Jonathan’s best efforts.

As can be seen in the Honours Board Page, Richard is no stranger to winning the Khyber competition!

Khyber Cup 2020

Posted on by

The Khyber Cup is back!

This year’s Khyber Cup will take place on Saturday 5th September, 14:00.

This is a 5 round Swiss, with 10m+5s time control and a couple of minutes between rounds for a breathing space.

There is a Zoom session available for those who want to talk between rounds. Note that you should mute and turn off your speaker when playing to avoid being distracted. Nonetheless, avoid commenting on people’s in-progress games just in case they still have their speaker on.

This is a friendly event; please feel free to invite friends and family to join. Note that it is only open to members of the Crowthorne Team on Lichess. If you or your invitees, are not members you will have to join first (and to do that you will need a lichess membership).

For more details, please refer to Jonathan’s email.

Crowthorne enters teams in 4NCL Online

Posted on by

The 4NCL (Four Nations Chess League) has created on-line chess leagues (and tournaments) in the absence of over the board chess. George Green, our new 4NCL Captain, has kindly provided this update:

Crowthorne entered two teams in the 2nd 4NCL Online tournament, which started on Tuesday this week (Aug 25th). There are seven rounds, ending on 17th November, with the possibility of our first team playing in the semi final and final in December. The time control is 45 mins + 15 secs. 

Our first team is in Division 5 and our second team is in Division 6. Strangely our second team faced stronger opposition than our first team. 

Results:

AGM 29th July

Posted on by

We will use part of the regular Zoom session next week (July 29th) to hold the AGM. Please let Jonathan know any items you wish to raise. At the moment we have only one, which is to capture opinions on the format of league matches next season, ideally with the aim of forming a club preference. If you have views in advance on this, or any other topic, do let me know and I can add them to the agenda.

We will have a regular club meeting tomorrow (July 22nd).