The D team completed their domination of the NSDCA’s VMS League this week after swatting aside a beefed-up “C” team. Wednesday night saw the Dees come from 2-0 down to dramatically drub the C team and secure the league title. It did not look likely when Martin Frisher was drafted into the C team at the last minute to deliver an early blow to the champions-elect with a win on board 2. The addition of Martin allowed the rest of the C team to move down one board and create what appeared to be a decisive advantage, as the battle of the captains on board 4 also went in favour of the Cees as Dave Price made it 2-0. However the Ds like to deliver with drama and their was no shortage as the clock was well past 10pm with the score still standing at 2-0. First signs of the fightback came on board 1, where Rick Renegade appeared to be doomed to defeat but somehow conjured up a Houdini-like escape after having just a few seconds on his clock created enough havoc to pull off a surprise and make it 1-2. Then the flags came into play as board 3 saw guest (D team) player George Bulbeck pull a rabbit out of the hat when facing imminent defeat was gifted a win when his opponent ran out of time, and so it was 2-2 with board 5 in play. Here it was the turn of Pawel Stanny to complete the comeback, who fought and fought in a difficult position; so much so that another flag fell on the opponent’s clock and to the surprise of all onlookers, the D team had somehow emerged as 3-2 winners (all games won with white) to secure the League title after just 7 matches of a 10 match campaign. Congratulations to Nigel Gardner’s D team squad.
In other news, our youngest member – Oskar Jarzynski is currently rated at 1399E (at 1st March) which puts him in the top 10 players in the UK for the Under 10 age group. He stands out as the only North-West player in the top 10 of essentially an all Southern listing.