North Circular League – Summer Rapidplay League – Baum Cup – Captain's report

The final league fixture in the North Circular Summer Rapidplay League (the second year of this competition) took place yesterday evening against Wood Green, the favourites to win the title again after Barking slipped up in their first league match against Chingford 2. Wood Green went into the match undefeated with ourselves needing to win to share first place having lost to Barking in a hard fought match two rounds previously. Barking put out their strongest side in the competition against us of Sands, Goldberg, Stirling and Ramage and we did well to keep the winning margin down to 2 match points. Over the season Barking shaded the iindividual game scores by a single draw ahead of both Wood Green and ourselves.

At the suggestion of the League Secretary and with the sporting agreement of the Wood Green Captain a tie break on the basis of the actual result between the teams was adopted in advance of what turned out to be the final and deciding fixture. Any other form of tie break would have handed the advantage to Wood Green. On the night a draw was all that was required for Wood Green to retain their title.

In the standard play league our matches against Wood Green have always been hard fought and very competitive with our players rising to the challenge and rasing their games against generally stronger opposition. The rapidplay decider proved to be no different.

Wood Green fielded their top two players but were missing their next three on the night but they were still the stronger side with a significant advantage on board 1. They were slightly weaker as a result than the team they fielded against Barking though Barking themselves left out Jeff Goldberg for Ken Clow. Their victory over Barking by the narrowest of margins had brought us back into contention for the title.

From the Wanstead squad Dave Spearman and Larry Marden again filled the top two boards with Phil Staniland and a rare appearance by the Captain completeing the team. A cunning plan to rope in Gerry Hayes to try and outgun our opponents did not quite come to fruition.

Dave was outgraded by 14 standard points and 18 rapid play points facing Cenzig Hasman,

Larry was slightly outgraded by a few points on both scales by David Cutmore, a similar margin to the grading differnce in Phil's favour agianst Dervish Kiamil on board 4. Although ungraded my opponent reckoned he was of similar standing although I suspected I might have the edge in the shorter format. The teams were pretty well matched and at the outset I felt that we would be doing well to draw the match given Wood Green's advanatage on the top board.

I managed to win the toss to give Dave the white pieces in the first round. Having created a space advantage I created a passed pawn which proved to be decisive in a rook ending to score the first point. Larry secured an excellent attacking win with very little time to spare on the clock whilst Phil secumbed to positional pressure. Meanwhile Dave had managed to win two pawns and in the time scramble was not able to convert the sole remaining pawn in a bishop v knight ending with his opponent saving the day with just 9 seconds left on his clock. However the draw was a feat in itself and gave the team a one point and the psychological advantage going into the second round.

I again led from the front with an unstopable king side mating attack in the Dutch Defence. Dave this time sucumbed in a cut throat game to level the scores. Again Larry went for the attack creating a passed pawn which marched down the board creating a position of supremacy with a back rank mating net which secured the second point we needed for the match. Phil was not to be outdone and this time he had the positional pressure and a fatal time advantage to secure a rather flatering 3-1 score line in the second leg.

The overall result of 5.5 to 2.5 was by far our best result of the campaign taking team strengths into account and was a fitting way to finish on equal match and game points with Wood Green and win the league on the new tie break in stark contrast to the season before where we finsihed bottom of the league.

My thanks and congratualtions to all of the squad with some excellent individual performances along the way.

Larry Marden on board 2 for 4 of the 5 matches top scored with 7.5 out of 8 with only Jeff Goldberg (188) in the Barking match taking half a point from him. The double win against David Cutmore (185) set up the victory in the deciding match.

Sid Burns' double wins against Chingford 2 was the differnce between the two sides staving off the same fate that had befell Barking in their previous match.

Dave Spearman whilst not quite finsihing on 50% on board 1 secured excellent draws aginst David Sands (210), Cengiz Hasman (204) and Costas Karayiannis (197). The draw against Costas proved to be crucial in the very tight season opener against Chingford 1 and the draw against Cengiz in the first round of the decisive final match was psychologically invaluable for the team in securing the narrow lead going into the final round.

P W D L PTS % BD PERF

R 186 Spearman 8 2 3 3 3.5 44% 1 183

R 181 Marden 8 7 1 0 7.5 94% 2 215

R 160 Gilmour 6 2 1 3 2.5 42% 2.3 155

R 168 Murrell 4 3 0 1 3 75% 3 176

S 141 Nickals 2 1 0 1 1 50% 3 130 est

R 157 Staniland 8 3 3 2 4.5 56% 3.5 154

S 114 Burns 2 2 0 0 2 100% 4 170 est

R 171 Smith 2 0 1 1 0.5 25% 4 137

Thanks also to Phil for providing the transport where required including his submarine for the opening match against Chingford 1 where our opponents were very generous in allowing extra time due to torrential rain and flash flooding, although not time enough for Larry to dry out!

The squad played 5 matches winning 4 and losing 1 with 24.5 game points scored and 15.5 game points conceded. 20 games were won, 9 were drawn and 11 were lost. Team selections ensured that all of our results were by a narrow margin save for the Enfield match where they fielded an understrength side.

A 173 Wanstead v Chingford 1 166.25 4.5 – 3.5

H 143 Wanstead v Chingford 2 139.5 5 - 3

H 174.5 Wanstead v Barking 188.25 3 - 5

A 171 Wanstead v Enfield 143.75 6.5 – 1.5

A 173 Wanstead v Wood Green 174.25 5.5 – 2.5

Having started the season with a trophy there is no reason why we cannot win another, so over to Paul Barclay to take up the batton in the Essex Knockout semi-final against Writtle on Tuesday.

For those who are interested the final result tables for the league appear below: