Bonzer report from Trefor Thynne, generous in defeat! With photos. p a href="http://www.chessdevon.co.uk/HTML/News/dcca/dcca1.htm" title="http://www.chessdevon.co.uk/HTML/News/dcca/dcca1.htm"http://www.chessdevon.co.uk/HTML/News/dcca/dcca1.htm/a /pp I got a very nice letter from Trefor too. /pp P.S. I expect that link will contain more recent news at some point, let me know if it stops working. /pp P.P.S. Games added /pp P.P.P.S. Report stolen and appended blockquote Newton Abbot Chess Club travelled to Exeter on a summer-like day hoping to repeat their cliff-hanging win over Tiverton in last year’s final. This competition is for teams of 8 players with a total team grade under 1120. This usually makes for testing team-selection decisions and two broad but differing selection policies have been noted in the past: either play a couple of strong (170-180) players at the top and hope to find some good-value members at 80-100 at the bottom end or aim for a team grouped much more around the median 140 figure. Your correspondent favours the former if only because in the event of a 4-4 draw (as in 2010) board count decides and wins at the top count for more. p The two teams looked well-matched with Newton Abbot having a slight but probably insignificant grade advantage of 25 points. As it turned out the visitors never really looked like repeating their 2010 success as things started to go wrong after a couple of hours play. /pp On board 3 Charlie Howard was at least equal against Piet Dobber on the Black side of a Sicilian Defence but blundered a piece away in the late middle-game (Newton Abbot 0 Exeter 1). /pp On board 7 Brian Aldwin and John Doidge had traded blows for over 60 moves and the ending of R+B v R+N may well have been drawn. However the fact that Brian had been moving twice as fast put John under time pressure at the second control and he lost a piece. (N.A. 0 Ex 2). /pp The board 2 game between Andrew Kinder and Sean Pope had looked destined for a draw from an early stage as an open centre led to an exchange of many pieces. A dead drawn opposite colour bishop ending was soon reached. (N.A.0.5 Ex. 2.5) /pp The board 5 game was looking favourable for William Marjoram against John Allen as he had d-file pressure and a good outpost on d5. However he overreached himself and John struck back well to win a Bishop and the game. (N.A.1.5 Ex 2.5) /pp The decisive turning point in the match came in the top-board clash between Robert Thomson and Tim Paulden. Paulden as White tried a Polish (Orang-Outang) with b4 and gained considerable pressure on the a and b files with Black having a rather rigid central pawn structure which limited counter-play. White was able to force Black’s capitulation by pushing a pawn all the way to a8. (N.A. 1.5 Ex 3.5). /pp Newton Abbot struck back with a rather fortunate win by 13 year-old John Fraser against Richard Scholes who was certainly winning comfortably at one stage but managed to drop a piece. John did not give him a chance to recover and converted efficiently. (N.A. 2.5 Ex 3.5). /pp On board 6 it looked for a long time as though Freddie Sugden’s energetic play in a Danish Gambit would bring another point for the visitors. John Maloney’s stubborn defence a pawn down enabled him to channel the game into a knight and pawn ending in which the defending knight would be able to sacrifice itself for the remaining enemy pawns, quite a common theme in such endings. (N.A. 3 Exeter 4). /pp The last game to finish did not however promise any late salvation for the visitors as Wilf Taylor had lost a piece in a tense middle-game against Chris Southall and though he struggled on into the endgame he had to resign. (Final score: Newton Abbot 3 Exeter 5). /pp So Exeter triumphed on the day in a most enjoyable match played in the best of spirits at the Exeter club’s new venue in Heavitree. /pp More Devon clubs should consider entering the Peter Rooke Cup as it provides an opportunity for clubs to field teams representative of their whole membership rather than just a narrow grade band. It is a cup which fosters good club spirit as it is played over a larger number of boards than any other DCCA competition. /p/blockquote /pp Within about a day of posting this, the game scores surfaced, not on ChessDevon, but in my letterbox -- Thanks Trefor! ul listrongHover mouse over board squares to see extra controls/strong e.g. b2 = toggle autoplay, b5 = search, a5 = repeat last search, f3 = next game, f8 = shortcuts help /li/ul iframe id="inlineframe" name="inlineframe" style="border-width: 1px; border-color: gray;" height="1100" width="100%" frameborder="1" scrolling="auto" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" src="/chessx/pgn4web/collection.html?pgnfile=/chessx/pgn/PRooke2011.pgn?title='Exeter vs. Newton Abbot, Peter Rooke Cup Final 2011" your web browser and/or your host do not support iframes as required to display the chessboard /iframe/p