Online 4NCL Round 4

Good results for both Crowthorne teams yesterday (9th March), both winning 4-0. Well done everybody!

As can be seen Crowthorne 1 substantially out-rated their opponents. It’s obviously still a good result, which puts us equal first in our group in division 4.

Crowthorne 2’s match was much closer on rating, and the result was the first win of the season.

Full results and tables etc can be found on the 4NCL website (see divisions 4 and 7 for the Crowthorne teams).

Online 4NCL Round 3

A good result for our 1st team. Unfortunately Derek’s opponent didn’t turn up, so the match is actually scored -0.5 – 4.0 in Crowthorne’s favour.

After three rounds, this leaves Crowthorne 1 on 4 match points out of a possible 6 in their eight-team group in Division 4. This puts us in equal second but with four rounds to go it is obviously early days yet.

Our 2nd team lost, but Dylan won and Teah managed an amazing stalemate!!

Final position of J Leake – Teah de Silva. Black to move!

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

Online 4NCL Round 2

On Tuesday Crowthorne 1 won their 4NCL match against Harrow 3:

This leaves them in fifth place, out of eight, in their pool in division 4.

In Division 7, Crowthorne 2 narrowly lost their match against KJCS 2:

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

4NCL on-line season 2 summary

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 3

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

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! 

Crowthorne enters teams in 4NCL Online

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:

4NCL Second Weekend Review

Rounds 3 and 4 of the 4 Nations Chess League took place over the weekend (11-12 Jan) and once again Crowthorne Chess Club was in action.

The first team, playing in Division 3, drew a tight match on Saturday, and won on Sunday, leaving themselves in clear first place after four rounds (still a long way to go).

The second team (Division 4) won on Saturday but lost to a strong CSC team on Sunday, leaving them exactly mid-table – 17th out of 34 teams.

We hope to make a more detailed report in a later post.

Click here for 4NCL Tables

Derek had a good weekend, winning both games in short order. Here is his Sunday game, where he had the Black pieces:

4NCL First Weekend Report (Nov 2019)

Once again Crowthorne has two teams competing in the 4NCL (Four Nations Chess League), the UK’s national team championship. We have one team in Division 4, and one team in Division 3, having gained promotion last year.

The first 2 rounds have just taken place this weekend (9-10 November).

The B team narrowly lost 2½ – 3½ on Saturday but a 5-1 win on the Sunday puts the B team comfortably mid table.

The A team won 4-2 on the Saturday and 5-1 on the Sunday so a strong start in division 3.