Looking ahead this week, Crewe will be kicking off the new NSDCA RP Online season with 3 matches. See our tab on the top bar of our website for fixtures/results.
Last Tuesday was Round 4 of the current 4NCL season, with our AOL team playing division 3 up against leaders Wessex Some Stars, with grades of over 175 on bottom board; and our BOL team against Ashfield Anonymous D in division 6. It was no great surprise that both teams came unstuck as David Hulme gained our only half-point for the AOL team, while the BOL team did marginally better as Lukasz Michalek got a good draw on top board, and we benefitted from a default win as one of the opponents never appeared online. So both teams slip to midtable with 50% scores of 4pts from 4 matches. Round 5 takes place on Tuesday 20th October.
The other event to take place this week was our Monthly Lichess Challenge and for this we decided to play a 6-round Chess960 competition. It took a lot of us by surprise with the strange starting poistions for all back rank pieces, but it soon emerged that our youngsters Adam and Harry adapted quickly together with our most experienced online player Karl. As these three all headed to the final round with scores of 4/5; Harry and Adam were thwarted as Karl was the only one to win and claim the Gold Medal spot, with another youngster Lukasz joining the pile on 4pts. It seems that all enjoyed the novelty of the Chess960 and it is likely to feature again in next month’s Club Night Challenge on the first Wednesday of the month.