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.
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.
Following their win against Bishop Knights on Tuesday, Crowthorne 1 emerged top of Group D in Division 5, finishing just ahead of local rivals Farnham. Promotion (or otherwise) will now be determined by subsequent playoff matches against other group winners.
The table is as follows:
Full results and table can be found on the 4NCL web site
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:
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.
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!
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:
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.
Derek had a good weekend, winning both games in short order. Here is his Sunday game, where he had the Black pieces:
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.
Ken Coates, our 4NCL captain, has provided the following report on Crowthorne’s 2018/19 season
Firstly I would like to thank everyone who took part in this year’s 4NCL campaign in division 4S.
Crowthorne 1 ran out the division 4 winners with 21 points from a possible 22 points with 10 match wins and one draw and will now play in division 3 next season.
Crowthorne 2 achieved a respectable 5 points considering they only played 6 of the 11 matches because players were unavailable to make a team.
The final table can be found at http://www.4nclresults.co.uk/2018-19/media/4ncl/prog-div4s.html
Before the next season I will be talking to everyone and gauging the viability of a second team. Unfortunately there aren’t many opportunities for people, and particularly juniors, to play FIDE rated games and to be noticed for England squad inclusion. Consequently many juniors have artificially low Fide ratings.
Major points about the results showed:
– we used 22 different players for the two teams
– Colin Purdon played in all 11 matches
– the following players actually didn’t lose a single game: Paul Cooksey (9/10), Richard Webb(6½/9), Colin Purdon (7½/11), Harvey Duckers (4½/5), Matthew Ward (2/3), Ganeshbabu Gnanagurusamy (1/1)
– scoring the most wins was Peter Tart and Paul Cooksey with 8 wins each
Regarding the next 4NCL season we don’t need to take any decisions yet because even the round dates and venues are not decided but there is a rumour that that some rounds could be in the Sunningdale area but this is not confirmed.
When I know more details I’ll be asking who wants to play next season particularly those who think they are likely to play in a majority of rounds because that information is likely to determine how many teams we have.
Individual perfomances are shown in the following table:
Paul Cooksey scored 2/2 on the 4th weekend, with the Black pieces on both days. Here is Paul’s Saturday (Round 7) game against Watford 1.
Paul won a pawn out of the opening, and pressed home the advantage with a nice exchange sacrifice which gave him a number of positional pluses.
A smooth performance by Paul, who made it look deceptively easy.