Congratulations to our third team for winning the 3rd division title after our 4th team defeated our 3rd team’s rivals R&B 1 3.5 – 0.5. Vinod applied pressure on Nick London’s position and, after breaking through, finished nicely. Marian sacrificed a piece to open up Mick Sandham’s position and won the piece back with a commanding position. Keith picked off Ben Vaughan’s pawns one by one and avoided any tricks. Ronnie was unable to covert a ‘won’ rook and pawn ending, settling for a draw.

This is the first time one of our teams has won a division since the truncated 2019-20 season when our 4th team won division 4, and prior to that when Gambit X, Gambit 3 and Gambit 4 won divisions 2, 3 and 4 in 2017-18.

Our third team will join our 2nd team in division two next season after the 2nd team finished 7th in division one following a 3.5 – 1.5 defeat to a very strong WB 1 team featuring two players on boards 1 and 2 who had managed to play just once between them previously this season. I’ll leave to others to decide whether this is in the spirit of the competition. Drag, Onos and John H lost to Tim Walker, Alan Agnew and Furkan Bahtiyar while Steve drew with Ben Humpreys. Felipe produced another giant killing act to beat Frank Richmond.