Thanks to Popeye (aka Andrew Crosby) we embarked on a new online challenge taking on the might of Kenya’s Nairobi Club using the Chess.com platform this afternoon. It was a match of 10 boards x two games of Rapid-play (25 mins + 10 secs increments)
The opposition outgraded us significantly as is common in these matches, and our top players all seemed to go AWOL, as secretary David Hulme was offered as the board 1 sacrificial lamb. The only positive for David was that he managed to go the distance in both games, hoping his opponent might fall asleep at the screen.
The most positive news came from Martin Frisher, playing on board 2 as he grabbed the bull by the horns, and came through with two wins – a superb and lonely effort. A number of our squad failed to disturb the scorers, but there were four players who came out with great credit all managing to pick up one win in their pair of games with contributions from chairman Dave on board 5, Kobus the slayer on 6, Lee the aggressor on 8, and Nigel the blitzer on 9.
The final score was 14-6 to Nairobi, with many of our team playing their first games on Chess.com, which was quite an experience after playing on Lichess for nearly 12 months.