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Cumnor and Witney win the Junior 4NCL
- report by Andrew Varney and
Catriona Hauer
7th March 2012
An outstanding performance from all our players
this weekend, and a thoroughly deserved victory
at the top of division 2 ahead of the very
strong Yateley Manor A team.
Who would have thought as we
headed up to Hinckley Island for that first
weekend of the three in November that the team
would be claiming the trophy and top prize money
just a few months later? Over the three weekends
we've had four Witney and four Cumnor juniors
taking part in the team, and with all eight of
them available on the final day we even ended up
with an A and a B team, both of which went
undefeated!
On Saturday the team was
formed from Daniel Varney, Joost Hoppe, Isabel
and Marianne Hauer and Jakob Holton, with one
player taking a turn on a mixed reserves team
each round. This worked well and gave everyone
the chance to play a variety of opponents at
different levels.
Following the pattern from
previous weekends we won the first two games
(against Manchester Boys and Northampton Chess
Juniors) then suffered a bit of a dip in the
third round (also the norm!) to lose to the
Gloucester Giants 4-0. The opposition were
clearly the strongest team in the tournament,
having joined the league just for the final
weekend.
Joost Hoppe fought well to
stay fairly equal on board 1, but eventually
crumbled to a strong attack by 149-graded
Michael Ashworth. On board 2, Daniel Varney was
winning at first, but missed the right move in a
complex position arising in the middle game from
his opponent’s Traxler Counterattack in the Two
Knights and then made a series of blunders as
tiredness affected his concentration. On the
other boards we were significantly outgraded and
sadly there were no surprises - although we had
a very long wait for Jake who kept fighting
right up until dinnertime. Meanwhile Isabel had
escaped facing the Gloucester Giants, but
instead found herself on board 2 against Yateley
Manor A as a reserve and playing Chris Perryman
for the fourth time in the overall event - they
had divided honours evenly thus far but he
finally got the better of her!
Despite everyone from the
team finishing the day with a a loss, spirits
remained high and Jake and Daniel paired up for
the evening's Exchange Chess event, while
Marianne teamed up with Eva Ressel from
Northampton to be the best girls team.
So on Sunday morning
reinforcements in the shape of Zoe Varney and
Joseph Truran arrived in time to play the key
game of the tournament against Yateley Manor A.
After thirteen matches representing up to over
one hundred hours cumulative playing time, who
won the league division 2 title came down to
this one match! Yateley Manor A had previously
drawn with the Gloucester Giants thanks to Harry
Grieve’s victory over Michael Ashworth. This
meant that Yateley Manor A were one match point
ahead (though further ahead on game points).
Realistically, the only way we could win would
be to beat them in this match and win our last
match also (which was very likely since we’d
already played the strongest teams). Zoe was the
first to finish, losing to the strong Harry
Grieve, and at that point it looked as if only
Joost was in complete control of his game, being
a pawn up with a stronger position. Joseph had a
slight edge, but one slip against a very much in
form Chris Perryman would have been enough to
lose it. Daniel was a piece for a pawn down.
In fact, there was no need to
worry. Daniel was in fact next to finish,
seemingly turning the game around to force a
pawn promotion. However, on looking through his
game afterwards Andrew realised that he was only
ever superficially worse off, and that he had
deliberately sacrificed the piece for an attack
with a better end game as the result.
Joost meanwhile calmly
converted his advantage step by step for a
smooth win. Only Joseph’s game was left, which
he had to win or draw for the match (and hence
probably the top prize) to go to the Cumnor and
Witney team. Joseph was getting a little low on
time, but after a long attritional battle in an
Advance French he got down to a good vs bad
bishop ending and a likely win.
In the event, however, since
he was short of time and well aware of the
team’s position, he offered a draw which was
accepted. There was a slight glitch in the final
round against Manchester Girls when one of the
games was surprisingly lost, but the other three
recorded easy wins so it did not matter to the
final result.
The newly formed B team -
Isabel, Marianne, Jake and six year-old
Callaghan McCarty-Snead (who was also being
coached as an England Junior that weekend) - had
their first match against Yateley Manor C, who
had also entered Division 2 for the first time.
Our experience showed here as we won 4-0. The
last round saw them pitched against third placed
Yateley Manor B - a team we had drawn against in
a previous weekend. To avoid playing the same
opposition for a second time they swapped board
orders a bit and Marianne took on board 1 where
she got a draw. Jake was unlucky this time, and
Isabel had her longest match (watching her
opponent take half an hour over his final,
losing move) and Callaghan his shortest (out in
about five minutes with a victory!).
Isabel was top team scorer
from the weekend with 4/5 points each. On
another weekend this might have been enough for
an individual medal, but not with the Gloucester
Giants on such strong form.
It’s been great to see how
much our players have improved over these
months, partly due to the great coaching by the
likes of Andrew Martin, Nick Pert and Sabrina
Chevannes, but also from playing strong
opposition in concentrated periods. Just how
strong our squad had become was highlighted on
the last day, when we had all eight players in
two successful teams. Overall what has served us
so well is the depth of ability in our team
together with their hard work and ability to
learn from mistakes. Whereas some of the other
teams have had their top stars, the difference
was our strength in depth in both teams, with a
much smaller gap in ability between our top
players and our lower boards than was the case
with most of our competitors. TRULY A TEAM
EFFORT.
Andrew Varney and Catriona Hauer
March 2012
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