4NCL online (week 3)
22nd September 2020
Atticus B 3-1 Temple Sutton
It would be churlish not to admit that the draw has been favourable to Atticus B this season, our first three fixtures being against the three sides that occupy the bottom places in the eight team divisional pool. Yet you have to beat what is in front of you, as they say, and this season we are doing that consistently in a way were were not last time around.
James Rothwell 1-0 John R Marshall
It was terrific to welcome James back for his first out in the 4NCL this season. Black's plan in any hypermodern system should be to destabilise white's centre, yet once the centre closed, white's space advantage looked strategically superior. Once the breakthrough came via the f4 break, black's cramped pieces simply lacked the co-ordination to defend.
Melvyn R Pool 0-1 Sanjoy Banerjee
After two decidedly streaky wins, I retained my own personal 100% tally, yet once again not without luck. The 6.h3 treatment of the Najdorf is the ultra-fashionable way to find an advantage, indeed so much so that I had neglected to brush up on my plans and ended up in a painful middlegame where my queenside attacked seemed painfully slow, versus white's direct attack. Yet my opponent was too tentative and allowed me to catch up and overtake, and the breakthrough on the queenside came with a bare couple of tempi to spare.
Mark Wadsworth 1-0 Purba Audhora
Mark survived a real scare against his tyro opponent, who appears to have a scorching kingside attacked, which resolved itself into a material imbalance of two minor pieces versus rook, which remained favourable. Yet experience is an invaluable commodity and Mark was able to capitalise in the endgame before black co-ordinated properly to take the victory.
Mark Clancy 1-0 Lee Webster
Games can be followed fortnightly on Tuesday evenings starting at 7.30pm at https://lichess.org. Simply search for the player’s online handle and navigate to the games tab. Fixtures, results and details of player account names can be found on the 4NCL website an hour before games begin.
Round 4 is this evening (Tuesday 6th October).