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
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
Our friends at Camberley Chess Club have set Sunday November 1st as the date for this year’s Keith Richardson Memorial. It is a one day rapidplay tournament which will be held online at lichess.org. For more details please visit the Camberley Chess Club page.
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!
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!
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.
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:
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).
The Honours Board page has been updated to include Crowthorne’s successes in the Berkshire Chess League competitions. The equivalent for the Surrey Border League will follow shortly.