The 4NCL 25/26 kicked off last weekend, in a new venue—Dudley! Significantly closer to home than Peterborough!
First up, a team of pretty strong juniors/teenagers. 15-17 year olds, so not too scary. Steve and Dale quickly got pleasant positions out of the opening. Dale looked to be well on top. Sam was locked in battle on top board with his strong opponent. On 6, Jordan won his game quite quickly after a highly dubious knight sacrifice in an opposite castling position. His young opponent failed to find the right moves and Jordan crashed through. Andrew apparently accepted a free piece and won without too much trouble. Hywel had a fairly comfortable draw on 5. Unfortunately, the other boards had taken a turn for the worse. Sam was fighting for his life, daring to walk into a discovery to try to get safe, Steve had missed a Rh2 defence and proceeded to completely destroy his position, finding himself in a pawn down rook ending. Dale had been rebuffed, and somehow found himself also down a pawn, but he drew the opposite bishop ending with ease. Quite an imperious bishop in the middle of the board defending everything. Unfortunately Sam’s opponent was merciless and took the full point, and to make matters worse Steve having survived the time control to reach a 3-result position simply gave away a critical pawn and his position was now utterly hopeless. With the score at 3-2 to us, Steve played on powered by anger at his own stupidity. Miraculously, after playing some nice moves for a while, his opponent finally started making some questionable choices and the win started getting slightly technical, entering a R2vsR position. He then blundered a nice stalemate trick that cost him a pawn and allowed Steve to save the draw and the match was won, and Steve was saved from endless completely valid questions about why they couldn’t have gone for their curry an hour ago.
Our reward was a Welsh Derby on top board against a strong team—The Full Ponty. For some reason our colours were repeated, but it was decided to stick to the same board order anyway. We’ve played this board order every weekend so it will be the last thing they expect! Also, Steve didn’t want to have himself to blame if he switched to white and got another French. Lucky for us, our opponents were missing a bunch of strong players to the European Club Cup, so we had a decent chance of an upset. Hywel got the ball rolling by smashing his opponent in a Sicilian Dragon. He must enjoy waiting around. Dale followed suit with a swift KO against his opponent. (Why don’t my games look like this‽) Unfortunately Sam had gone astray in the opening and couldn’t get his king safe, and his opponent was not messing around. The writing was on the wall and Sam resigned. Meanwhile, Jordan had lost his game on bottom board—his first 4NCL defeat—after the opening had gone heavily against him. This left Steve and Andrew. Steve was in some kind of Geller gambit, up a pawn but not really sure how to break out, and trying to decide if he was happy with a draw. Andrew’s game was a complete mess, making this decision impossible. As it happened Steve missed an idea and decided he was definitely happy with a draw, and Andrew’s opponent had apparently made a tactical error and ended up trading into a lost ending, resigning soon thereafter. With the match on the line but no clear way to make progress, Steve’s opponent decided not to torture him, or risk losing a long game, and forced a draw which won the match for Castell Nedd.
Two narrow 3.5-2.5 wins for a fantastic start to the season, joint top (5th on game points)! Maybe we’ll get promoted! ;) A tough weekend awaits us in January!
