The final weekend of the Four Nations Chess League otherwise known as 4ncl was held this past bank holiday weekend. For those of you not from the UK , a bank holiday is effectively a public holiday and is called that as it was traditionally when the banks shut shop.
Firstly we should congratulate 3 players who made norms this weekend. Richard Palliser from White Rose made an 11 Round GM norm, Sam Franklin made an 11 Round IM norm and FM Michael White made an 10 Round IM norm. IM Jonathan Hawkins just missed out but drawing in the last round against GM Stuart Conquest. This would have been his 3rd and final norm. One thing to note is that we don’t think Jonathan has played abroad and wondered if it was possible to become a GM by gaining all your norms in your home country but GM Stephen Gordon achieved his title by playing in England!
The 1st Division was won by Wood Green Hilsmark quite comfortably with an 100% score. They have two teams in the top division and had to strengthen their second team to make sure they didn’t get relegated. Their line up this weekend included “the top amateur in the world” Luke McShane as well as Mickey Adams and their top team fielded 8 GMs! and their second team’s bottom player was IM Malcolm Pein. White Rose (Gawain’s team) managed to recover and finish in 3rd place after losing 3 in a row.
You can see the top division demotion pool above, 5-8 go down to division 2 and the top 4 of division 2 come up.
Here is one of Gawain’s win from the weekend, he lost to Nigel in a long endgame then managed a very quick win which is shown here against the Number 3 player in Africa!
###pgn### [Event “4ncl White Rose vs e2e4 1”]
[Site “Hinckley Island”]
[Date “2012.05.06”]
[Round “10”]
[White “Rizouk, Aimen”]
[Black “Jones, G.”]
[Result “0-1”]
[ECO “B73”]
[WhiteElo “2532”]
[BlackElo “2657”]
[PlyCount “44”]
[EventDate “2011.07.25”]
[EventType “swiss”]
[EventRounds “11”]
[EventCountry “BUL”]
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 g6 6. Be2 Bg7 7. O-O Nc6 8.
Be3 O-O 9. Qd2 d5 10. exd5 Nxd5 11. Nxc6 bxc6 12. Rfd1 Qc7 13. Bd4 e5 14. Bc5
Rd8 15. Na4 $2 Bf5 16. Ba6 Rab8 17. c4 $2 Nb4 18. Qxd8+ (18. Bd6 Rxd6 19. Qxd6
Qxd6 (19… Nxa6) 20. Rxd6 Bf8 $19) 18… Rxd8 19. Rxd8+ Qxd8 20. Bxb4 Bc2 21.
b3 e4 22. Re1 Bd4 0-1%%%pgn%%%
Check out the 4ncl website for more information!