Weekend one of the 4NCL was held over two separate weekends. Ashfield 2 and 3 played first and the games can be view on the 4NCLwebsite.
Due to some vagaries of the Swiss Pairing System we had two sets of matches against the same teams at the weekend; Guildford Young Guns 1 and Peterborough United. The opening round was seeded with Guildford the second seed in our 32 team division and as can be seen from the above tables, the four top rated teams already occupy the appropriate positions in the League. These teams were graded higher than five of the teams that were competing in the Division Three (Knights) which took place with us at the Weekend. The top teams in the Knights were rated at 2136, 2098, 2096 and 2093 average whilst the lowest was at a mere 1867. I hazard a guess that Division Three (Bishops) will be stronger.
Guildford Young Guns are teams of junior players coached by IM Andy Martin. They all wore matching hoodies with a club crest on the back together with their names. Of course being juniors they were under rated. Their results against us were P12 W9 D2 L1. The games will be available in due course. My opponent after the game said “Why didn’t you play the London System?” He’d spent hours preparing this opening. Unfortunately as shown on his score-sheet he’d prepared for Graham Neil!
The remaining teams are all clustered in mid-table; so one expects the remaining games to be closely contested for the remainder of the season.
Our games against Peterborough were both closely contested – Team 2 scrambled to a 4-2 win with two wins and four draws. On Sunday the match ended in a narrow defeat by 3½ – 2½. Alex Combie who had the outstanding results of the weekend tied the match at 2½ each leaving Alex Bentley in a totally empty playing room trying to hold back his opponent’s rooks with his rook and bishop. After 80 something moves he had to concede but put up a valiant defence.
This leaves Team 3 at the foot of the table with zero points with seven other teams and hopefully in a position to pick up some points in Weekend Two.
Neil Graham