Ashfield 1 compete in the Division 3 Bishops league of the 4NCL. A report of the first weekend follows. Games can be viewed on the 4NCL website.
Mike writes
Ashfield 1 had varying fortunes in the first two rounds of the 4NCL.
Saturday was a disaster with 4 games lost before the time control was reached. Hubert made it to move 40, but decided to resign rather than play a 41st move. I was losing my game as well having dithered a bit in the middlegame, but managed to sneak an undeserved draw with some mating threats. 0.5 – 5.5
In contrast, Sunday was a rout. John accepted a weak pawn on d6 for better piece activity in his game, while Justin went for opposite-side castling and was attacking quicker than his opponent. Both players converted their advantage into an extra piece. John decided to simplify into a won endgame, whilst Justin went for a crushing mating attack.
Paul also preferred a crushing attack. Facing a hyper-accelerated dragon, he controlled his opponents pawn breaks on the queenside. Not to be deterred, Black brought everything across to that side of the board to try to make weakness. But Paul reacted on the king side, ripping away the defending pawns and doubling rooks on the h-file to trap the abandoned king (3-0)
Richard secured the win after an interesting game. His opponent gave up a pawn early on but managed to create some counter threats in the major-piece middlegame, even temporarily going a pawn up. Black always had the disadvantage of a backwards isolated pawn on d6 though and Richard used this to win the manoeuvring battle, then material, then the game (4-0)
Hubert was next to finish. Having dropped two pawns in the opening he tried to hold against our opponents strongest player, but couldn’t prevent simplifications and conceded when his last piece was trapped.
Finally, mine was a more positional game. My opponent had doubled pawns on e3 and e4, and a long term weakness on a4. I managed to persuade him to play d5 leaving the e-pawns weak and severely blunting his counterplay. Some tactics just around the time control won me a pawn and the latent threat to his a4 pawn meant he had a tricky ending which he couldn’t hold. (5-1).
That leaves us solidly in the middle of the table with plenty of chess still to play.