4NCL 2006-07 Rounds 1&2

FCA Solutions 1 Rounds 5 & 6

A most successful weekend, with both matches won and not a single game lost. Also unique, I think, for one particular aspect more of which later.

Round 5 saw us up against Mindsports, outgrading them on every board, and with a 1-0 advantage from the start due to them defaulting board 8. Mac drew quickly, followed soon after by Paul. Laszlo's opponent's first two moves were .h6 and .g5, and he was duly punished (you really can't play that sort of thing against him!), and I sacced an exchange, not accepted, so I won a piece a few moves later. [Incidentally, for those who saw my game, if he takes it with .gxf5, I play 14e5! and if he takes my bishop with .dxc4, I sac yet another piece with 15Ne4!! which stops his Qd4+ and Qg4 idea - and so to prevent mate he has to give up too much material]. This took us to 4-1, and we were in no real difficulties in any of the other games, with Florin, Graham and Charles all drawing to reach a 5.5-2.5 win.

Sunday saw us outgrading Slough Sharks 3 by even more per board, the only game that was close grading-wise being Paul's. Helen was first to finish, beating Malcolm Pein's son very comfortably. My opponent got into a passive position, was going to lose a pawn and then accidentally dropped the exchange. Florin accepted a pawn sac, looked to be consolidated nicely, then missed a trick, his opponent taking a draw by repetition rather than regaining his pawn with advantage. Meanwhile, Kevin was all over his opponent, a couple of pawns up, and saw a tactic to win queen for rook but missing a mate in 3. But winning the queen was perfectly good enough. Graham had a nasty position, but managed to grovel a draw, and Paul then took a draw when he might have had a slight edge, to secure the match. Charles managed to draw what looked like a difficult ending, and Laszlo was last to finish, winning his usual positional crush within the first session. This meant that (i) we finished before 3pm for the first time for a long time and (ii) we won the bottom 3 boards for the first time ever (actually the 6th time, but the first time in division 3 without defaults)

Thanks to all who played. The next Div 4 matches are on 9th and 10th February, and are near Daventry, so less than an hour's drive away, so anyone who wants to go up there for one of the days to support, please let me know and I'll see what I can arrange.

All the best

Richard

FCA Solutions 2 Rounds 5 & 6

Saturday saw us paired against KJCA Kings, who we comfortably outrated. However, as KJCA are a junior team, the ratings can be meaningless and KJCA have been performing well above their ratings.

Brian had a quiet draw with neither player getting much out of the opening. Chris's game was very double-edged with the players attacking on opposite sides of the board. Eventually, he won 2 rooks for the queen but a weak king position made the win difficult until a very temporary sac won the queen for only of the rooks. I won a pawn early but at the cost of development. My opponent won the pawn back but missed a fork which I then proceeded to misplay, the game fizzling out to a drawn ending.

In the meantime, Adrian M outplayed the opposition driver, leaving us needing only a draw from the last 2 games. Unfortunately, Jeremy lost a piece in a complicated middle game and John, despite being the exchange up, had allowed his opponent to get his passed pawns far advanced, and they were threatening to win the game for him. Fortunately, he found a way of sacking the rook for one pawn while deflecting the opponents king. The final position could have been winning for John, but a draw was enough to win the match.

On the Sunday, our opponents were the other AMCA team, the Dragons, who outrated us on all boards. Unfortunately, we didn't really make a fight of it, except for Brian and Adrian M, who both had good wins against opponents graded about 100 points higher than them.

A 4-2 loss was the result.

So we maintain our 50% match record, top of those with those with 6 points and 12th out of 31 teams in the division. Congratulations to Adrian M for winning both games.

Thanks to all who played.
Adrian