The opening two rounds of the new 4NCL season, spread across two weekends in mid-October and early November, saw CSC/Kingston’s three teams make bold starts
As well as falling leaves, autumn sees the start of treks to Midlands hotels to play the opening rounds of the 4NCL season. CSC/Kingston 1 began with matches against Barbican and Cheddleton, played at the Copthorne Hotel in Dudley on 1/2 November. CSC/Kingston’s second and third teams had been in action a fortnight earlier at the same venue, which was being used by the league for the first time. All three teams performed superbly and, as we see below, are well placed after the first two rounds of the 11-round season.
CSC/Kingston 1 came a creditable seventh in division 1 last year and hope to do at least as well this season. There is a great deal of jeopardy in this very tough division – three of the 12 teams get relegated, a 25% churn. This is one too many in the view of this writer – two down would be fairer – but there is no question that it adds drama to the season.
The first team faced Barbican on Saturday. CSC/Kingston had a slight ratings edge but it promised to be very close, and the match seemed likely to set the tone for the rest of the season. The young Polish grandmaster Jakub Kosakowski, runner-up in last year’s Polish national championship, was making his debut for CSC/Kingston, supported by many of the regulars from last year’s successful campaign. Jakub had White against IM Alan Merry and, as the time control approached, the game became a comedy of errors and missed opportunities.
Barbican’s second IM, Sohum Lohia, came straight to Dudley from a very strong tournament in Coventry, where he had shared first prize with GM Vojtech Plat and IM Hao Wang. Clearly he was a player to be feared. But the CSC/Kingston board 2, FM Ulysse Bottazzi, playing Black, was able to neutralise the threat without undue alarms, and a draw was agreed after 36 moves.
CSC/Kingston’s board 3, Supratit Banerjee (pictured above), had White against FM Martin Taylor on board 3, and boldly gambited a pawn in the opening to get an initiative. For a long time the engine favoured Black, but in this position he erred and Supratit gradually got a stranglehold on the game:
David Maycock, with Black against Jonathan Rogers on board 4, had the advantage early on, but Rogers skilfully fought back and had the upper hand when David blundered a rook in time trouble. At that stage the match looked as if it could go either way, and seemed certain to be very close. But it was about to take a decisive turn.
Roland Bezuidenhout played a superb game in a complicated tactical struggle to win with White on board 5 against Stephen Dishman. Black’s key error comes in this position where he allows an exchange which gives White a powerful pawn centre.
An important win for CSC/Kingston and now we could breathe a little easier. But the result which completely changed the complexion of the match was on board 7, where young George Zhao with Black had a much better position against CSC/Kingston’s Peter Lalić when he inexplicably failed to make his 40th move to reach the time control. He thus lost on time, a tragedy for the promising Barbican junior and an unexpected bonus for CSC/KIngston, who were now winning the match with ease.
Liwia Jarocka, with Black, secured an important draw with Peter Sowray on board 6, and Zain Patel battled magnificently with Black against Emma Hng to hold a rook and pawn endgame two pawns down which for a long time he looked destined to lose. That gave CSC/Kingston the match 5.5-2.5 and made the Saturday-evening dinner a very pleasant affair, but it was hard not to feel sympathy for George Zhao, who had played very well to secure a potentially winning advantage against Peter Lalić before his brain fade.
On Sunday, CSC/Kingston 1 faced Cheddleton, with their three GMs and three IMs. We were outrated by an average of 100 points a board. I did not expect us to win the match and thought 5-3 was a likely score. I would happily have settled for 4-4, which one spectator predicted after the match had been under way for a couple of hours. To win it by 6-2 was simply extraordinary, and I couldn’t help reminding people on the Kingston WhatsApp group that the average age of our team was 21. A group of very talented and highly motivated youngsters had walloped some of the cream of British chess.
Jakub Kosakowski was always pressing against David Eggleston on board 1 and duly converted. Cheddleton’s Mark Hebden equalised with a nice attacking game against Liwia Jarocka. Ulysse Bottazzi once again played solidly to draw with GM Simon Williams on board 2, and Supratit Banerjee defended superbly to hold a rook endgame against GM Nick Pert when two pawns down. Supratit’s was the last game to finish, and it is worth studying the endgame and marvelling at the 11-year-old’s mature and resourceful defence.
The other four games were all won: Zain Patel beat Nina Pert with a powerful attack with White on board 8; Peter Lalić performed one of his characteristic escape acts to convert a losing endgame into a winning one with Black on board 7; and on the critical middle boards David Maycock beat Richard Pert with White on board 4 in a rollercoaster game and Roland Bezuidenhout recorded his second victory of the weekend by beating IM Ezra Kirk, who played an ambitious knight sacrifice which proved to be unsound.
David’s game was a dizzying one which left both him and his rival exhausted. He had a winning plus as the 40-move time control approached, but then made a mistake which gave Black a potentially decisive advantage. To have blundered away his second game of the weekend would have been crushing, but he showed remarkable resilience to fight back and turn the game around. This is the position in which David went wrong:
David’s win and Supratit’s draw ensured a convincing 6-2 win for CSC/Kingston, a remarkable result given Cheddleton’s strength and experience.
These two wins left CSC/Kingston 1 sitting proudly on top of division 1 (see table below), jointly with Wood Green, who on paper are the strongest team in the division. We face Wood Green in round 4 on the weekend of 10/11 January, and happily the match will not be played on paper but on eight chess boards.
CSC/Kingston 2 also had a fantastic opening weekend in division 3 (knights) and also ended up on top of the table (see below), half a game point ahead of Sussex Martlets and Ashfield 1. It is very pleasing to see our neighbours Surbiton also going well.
Matches in divisions 3 and 4 comprise six boards, compared with eight in the top two divisions. CSC/Kingston 2 beat Warrington Mates 3.5-2.5 in a tight struggle on Saturday, with wins by the ever reliable Peter Finn on board 1, Ewan Wilson on board 4 and Adrian Wallace on board 6, and a crucial draw by Clive Frostick with Black on board 2.
Sunday’s victory against the self-deprecatingly named Poole Patzers was slightly more emphatic at 4-2, but could still have gone either way. There will be no easy matches in this highly competitive division and winning promotion to division 2 – two teams go up from each 12-team division 3 pool – will be far from simple. The success on Sunday came courtesy of wins by Peter Hasson, Giampiero Amato and Adrian Wallace, who had an excellent weekend with two victories, and top-board draws against two highly rated players by Peter Finn and Clive Frostick.
It was a tremendous team performance across the weekend, with every player contributing. Peter Hasson, who was White on board 4 against Mark Collinson, has kindly supplied a detailed analysis of his fascinating king and pawn endgame.
CSC/Kingston 3 played in Dudley on the same weekend as the second team, 18/19 October, and also had a successful start to the season. We drew 3-3 against Oxford 3 on Saturday, with wins for Mike Cresswell and your correspondent, and then won 5-0 on Sunday against War and Piece B, one of whose players failed to show, leading to the deduction of a point.
These results left us joint seventh in the 29-team division 4, which is played as a Swiss tournament . The current table, showing the leading nine teams, is below.
Four teams are promoted from division 4, but there are some very strong outfits among the leading contenders and it is safe to assume that we will not be one of them. But this was nevertheless a pleasing beginning.
Well done to all three teams on their excellent starts; thanks to all the players who made the Great Trek to Dudley in north-west Birmingham; and thank you as ever to team captain Kate Cooke, who keeps the whole show on the road. We now have 43 CSC/Kingston squad members, and juggling that number of potential players and getting them to the various Midlands hotels we will play in during a long season is a complicated logistical undertaking.
Stephen Moss
