New “E” Team in the Making
The influx of new members this season has driven a review of options for teams next season. What we are proposing is to set up a new “E” team that will support the “new to competitive chess” members. Behind this we aim to put mentoring and chess development support, giving the opportunity and assistance for as many newer players (and older juniors from the junior club) who wish to play in “classical” (longer) time limit league chess.
As part of this programme, on Tuesday (29/4) we held an internal trial match in league conditions - which will be submitted for grading.
Michael and Tariro finished their game early and unfortunately I didn’t get to see much of it as I was talking with some more potential new joins in the other room!
The other two games were intensively fought and both went on past 10pm!
Josh was a piece down but several pawns up. More importantly he was close to promoting several of those pawns. David attacked Josh’s king and almost had a perpetual check. Eventually though Josh’s king made it to relative safely and then the passed pawns came through for the win!
On the second board there were lots of ups and down and each player had opportunities to take the advantage. Finally the game came down to a rook and pawns versus rook and pawns ending. A famous quote is “All rook endgames are drawn” but this had its moments until finally the players shook hands on a draw.
So honours even for the two ad-hoc teams.
The feedback was that all the players enjoyed the experience and they experienced some of the extended intensity - and adrenaline! - of the “classical time limit” competitive chess. This all augurs well for next season!
| Derby "E1" | 1½ - 1½ | Derby "E2" | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Longworth, David | U | 0 - 1 | Gahonia, Josh | U |
| 2 | Morrel, Curtis | U | ½ - ½ | Videira, Hugo | U |
| 3 | O'Doherty, Micheal | U | 1 - 0 | Nhari, Tariro | U |
Kevin D 30/03/25