We had 10 matches this month, winning 4, drawing 3 and losing 3, including 4 matches against R&B where we only managed to draw twice, so we need to correct that. We gave debuts to Simon and Rob.
Our 4th team performed best, winning both matches, v Uni 2 & Cen 1, and share the lead of division 3 with Newark 2 who also have won their first 3 matches. Early days but…
Our 5th team also did well, beating WN 3 and drawing with RB 4 to share the lead of division 4 with RB 3, both on 7 points after 4 matches.
Our 1st team didn’t trouble the league leaders Grantham 1 but bounced back to beat WB 1 who for once did not have their strongest team out against us. They are 3rd in division 1.
Our 3rd team lost to RB 1, our 6th team drew with Ash 4 and our 7th team played its first two matches of the season, drawing at RB 7 and losing to RB 6.
The most memorable moments of the month are:
a) Mike B was gifted a mate in 1 by Paul Cumbers who had turned down two offers of a draw.
b) Onos, while level, showed great sportsmanship by not claiming a win after Chris Budd’s phone rang twice within 5 minutes. Onos went on to win the game (phew). The only player visibly affected by the phone ringing was WB’s Eddie Bromilow who was already struggling (and later lost) against Mike N-E.
c) Marian learnt an important lesson after squandering a won position v Pavlo Demchuk, almost 100 points higher than him. He had played exceptionally well to reach the position but then missed the need to play an intermediate move before applying the final blow and Pavlo escaped with a draw, much to his relief. Marian was still rightly pleased with his play against a stronger player.
d) Quite appropriately for Halloween week, a spooky thing happened in the Gam 4 v Cen 1 match this week. Marian lost his queen on move 16, and Graham won his opponent’s queen also on move 16. How weird is that? 16 is a sort of significant number in chess, which makes it even spookier.
The league is now 8 weeks old and so far 224 people have played at least once, 15 more than this time last season and 28 more than this time in 2024-25. Of those 224, 40 are new to the league while 7 have returned after at least one season away. We could be on course to match the 270 players in 2018-19 season but we are still a long way behind the 493 players from 28 clubs in 1986-87.