Senior Chess - 5th Round Digest
From last week's cliffhanger:
Can Fergusson hold the momentum? What will OPC mean for week 6, it could be anybodys round? Are Aitken really even with Mawson?
So at the end of round 4.
F 8
M 6
G 5
Mn 4
A 4
U 2
S 1.5
P 1.5
ROUND 5
Aitken vs MacKenzie
I'd almost finished settling all the players and getting the games underway when suddenly Rumbal slammed his queen down and almost shouted checkmate. Parsonson threw his chair backwards and was out of here. Meanwhile Eddie Lo put up a good defence against Rob Cartwright but ultimately lacked the technical strength and concentration to come back from two pieces down. Mac 2 Aitken 0
Uttley vs Glasgow
Karl Van der Plas showed exceptional leadership in making sure Abhinav got to class on time after this round by beating him with 10 minutes to spare. Nine vs Karl Kessell was a particularly strange game where the center was unmoved and the wings on both sides were wide open. It could have been anybody's, or nobody's, so Nine grabbed it. U 1 G 1
Smith vs Ferguson
Jeremy Wong stood in for Wei Shian against Sameer of Smith. This was the one hope that Fergusson would drop a game. They didn't and weren't even close to thinking about losing. Wei Kai crushed his opponent and then beat on SEW for a while for good measure. Wong and Chen then proceeded to sing "we've got 10 points we've got 10 points" etc to the tune of Rachmaninov's 2nd. F 2 S 0
Plimmer vs Mawson
Toby Barton returned to the board for Mawson, replacing Lyford. It made no difference. Plimmer's top man, Wolyncewicz, fought valiantly against Ryan "Bulldozer" Wyatt. Wyatt reminds me of something said about Anatoly Karpov - "You think you're even and when you realise you're not it's already too late to do anything about it". Mn 1 P 1
What does all this mean?
F 10; M 8; G 6; Mn 5; A 4; U 3; P 2.5; S 1.5
Round 6: A v G, M v F, U v Mn, S v P
This means Ferguson have all but won it. EXCEPT they have to play Mackenzie next week and Rumbal is not in a losing mood after being swindled by SEW on a King's Gambit. The rumoured (from a very unreliable source) new Y12 IB entrant, G. Kasparov Jr, is also likely to be assigned to Mackenzie house. The gloves will be off in the continuing relegation battle between Smith and Plimmer.
There's so much to look forward to in the penultimate round and it's possible we may have a tie going into round 7.....