The 2024-25 season began last night (week 0 in the NCA Fixtures) with two matches between teams in our club, Gambit 2 v Gambit 1 and Gambit 5 v Gambit 4. The matches were affected by several members’ unavailability, a potential flight delay, a car problem and a traffic issue. Otherwise it was a perfectly normal evening, and we comfortably managed to field 18 players, almost 60% of our membership!
The 1st team, without John S and Pete M, managed to avoid losing to the 2nd team for the 4th time in a row at the start of a season, with a 3.5 – 1.5 win. Mike B, after being surprised by Drag’s opening, reached a slightly better position before Drag dropped a central pawn allowing Mike to execute a text book ending. That’s Mike’s 6th win out of 6 league games between them. Mike N-E and Onos played out a tense game loaded with double-barrelled threats before agreeing a draw. That’s 1-2-0 for Mike v Onos in league matches between G1 & G2. Florian had a relatively comfortable evening, gradually building up an attack against John H before eventually breaking through in the first clash between them. Felipe initially looked slightly worse than Steve but turned it round and gained revenge for his defeat to Steve in the same match two years ago. Peter G-M was doing nicely before gifting his bishop to Nikolai.
The 5th and 4th teams fought out a close match, eventually with honours even. Paul was able to take the shine off Brian’s polished opening and they drew. Charlie outplayed Tom. Andy drew with Graham in the clash of the ex-Oxclose lads. Dave lost to Ronnie, who he has not beaten in 4 attempts.
Next week we have the 2nd, 3rd, 4th & 5th teams all playing at our venue, which should be fun.