The creme of Clubland chess gathered on Tuesday 07 May at the magnificent RAC Clubhouse to challenge for the Sheldon Marshall Trophy. This is the annual inter-club blitz (5 min per side speed chess) competition.
The NLC had its big guns out and was hoping for a repeat of the (unexpected) mid-table performance from 2018.
There’s a famous saying that chess is a game of two halves and so it was to be that evening. The Libs took a little while to rev up, losing a number of the early rounds and only scraping the odd half point here and there. But after some light refreshment at half time the Libs found their stride, and powered through the field in the second half of the evening.
The result: seventh out of a field of twelve, with six points overall – a 50% score. Not bad in itself given our usual position in the HR league table, but even that underplays the performance. With three teams on only half a point more than us (6.5 overall), just a turn in one or two boards in one or two matches would have had the NLC far higher up. (An honourable mention in dispatches goes to Doctor Kirby, who took a half point from Peter Lee after going the exchange up.)
Still, there’s always next year.
The final crosstable:
Cheers Ben. I secured 3.5/11. Won some I should have lost and lost some I should have won. I was a piece up against Peter Lee who had to seek a perpetual check. The real regret was when I was the exchange and a pawn up against Sam Franklin and promptly put a rook en pris.
The real top performance was from Mister Whiteley on Board 2. I think he had 6 or 7 out of 11, including a demolition of Izzie Thomas.
My word – didn’t realise Mister Whiteley was quite so ferocious that evening. Well done, sir.
Nick is being modest as I also noticed him beat correspondence GM Richard Hall soon after defeating FM Richard Black.