Report from Douglas Vleeshhouwer (captain of the A team)
Good morning everyone!
Despite being outgraded on 6 out of the 8 boards, we managed to draw our match against York A and we are therefore champions of Yorkshire for the 2nd time in 3 years!!
I was not confident, because we were without Andrei and I was expecting York to field their strongest team possible.
But to my surprise IM Simon Ansell wasn’t on their team sheet, nor were Paul Townsend and Steve Hodge, so I was hopeful at the start of the match that we might be able to pull it off.
It turned out to be a stressful afternoon!!
Kamila managed to draw fairly quickly with black against Ilya Lemeshev.
I was second to finish, with a draw against Detlef Plump – I got nothing out of the opening and the same colour Bishop and pawn endgame was a dead draw.
Joe Varley lost against Aaron Rich. The score was 2-1 to York A.
In the meantime, Maksym and John had built very favourable positions. Maksym was a pawn up early on and later won another one. John had won an exchange for a pawn.
Mark had a good position but was using a lot of time.
Paul Kendall’s position was cramped but he was hanging in there. He offered a draw which his opponent declined.
Tim Turner was a piece up but grabbed a pawn that he shouldn’t have – it allowed his opponent to infiltrate his position. Tim also started to run low on time.
Paul’s position improvement but another draw offer was declined again, something his opponent would regret because he over pushed and suddenly Paul had a winning Rook and pawn ending which he ruthlessly finished. Match score: 2-2.
Next to finish was Tim, who unfortunately didn’t have enough time to calculate the very complicated, double edged position. 3-2 to York.
Then Mark lost on time. Mark had been defending a B+K+pawns vs B+B+ 2 fewer pawns endgame for the last half an hour or so on less than a minute on his clock and ran out of steam. 4-2 to York.
Maksym looked to be winning for most of his game but Richard Palliser was setting traps and ended up winning a piece. However, Maksym had seen further and with a dangerous passed pawn on the 6th rank was the one still calling the shots. He then outplayed Richard in the blitz part of the game. 4-3 to York.
Last to finish was John, who demonstrated once again how good he is in endgames. He calmly forced a queen trade whilst giving up a pawn, to get a winning Rook and pawn ending. 4-4!
What a fantastic performance!
I couldn’t be happier.
We didn’t lose a single match this season. We won 8 matches and only drew against York A. We scored 51 board points and conceded only 21!
The stats speak for themselves: No-one on the team scored less than 50% in the whole season and 7 players were unbeaten!
Name | Games played | Points | % | # white | #black |
John G Cooper | 8.0 | 7.0 | 88% | 4 | 4 |
Mark I Collinson | 9.0 | 5.5 | 61% | 4 | 5 |
John Thackray | 6.0 | 5.0 | 83% | 3 | 3 |
Tim M Turner | 7.0 | 4.5 | 64% | 6 | 1 |
Joe Varley | 9.0 | 4.5 | 50% | 5 | 4 |
Kamila Hryshchenko | 5.0 | 4.0 | 80% | 1 | 4 |
Maksym Larchikov | 6.0 | 4.0 | 75% | 3 | 3 |
Eric D Gardiner | 6.0 | 4.0 | 67% | 2 | 4 |
Douglas Vleeshhouwer | 7.0 | 4.0 | 57% | 4 | 3 |
Paul SN Kendall | 4.0 | 3.5 | 88% | 2 | 2 |
Andrei Ciuravin | 3.0 | 3.0 | 100% | 2 | 1 |
Jack Walker | 1.0 | 1.0 | 100% | 0 | 1 |
Keith Thompson | 1.0 | 1.0 | 100% | 0 | 1 |
John C scored the most points of the team and in fact of any player in the Woodhouse: 7 out of 8, 6 wins, 2 draws, a rating performance of 2355!
Maksym played all his 6 games on board 1, scored a phenomenal 4 points (1 loss, 2 draws, 3 wins) a rating performance of 2350! This includes a draw and a win against 2 International Masters, Andrew Ledger and the aforementioned Richard Palliser respectively.
Kamila scored 80% in her 5 games (unbeaten, with 3 wins and 2 draws), despite playing most games with black – apologies for this Kamila. She had a rating performance of 2347!
Andrei only played 3 times but won all of his games, a rating performance of 2585!
Paul also didn’t lose any games for the team, a rating performance of 2106!
John T was also unbeaten this season, scoring 4 wins and 2 draws, with a rating performance of 2088!
Eric scored 4 points, 1 loss, 2 draws and 3 wins, a rating performance 2053.
Tim lost 2 games, drew 1 and won 3; a rating performance of 1981.
Mark was one of 2 players who played in all the matches (Joe being the other one). 2 losses, 3 draws and 4 wins gave him a performance rating of 2048.
I lost 1 game, drew 4 and won 2; a rating performance of 2055.
Joe for the first time in recent years wasn’t the top scorer of the team, but he did play on top board twice, and on the 2nd board twice, as well as twice on board 3 and three times on board 4. Joe won 4 of his games, drew 1 and lost 4; a rating performance of 2092.
Super subs Jack and Keith both won their single game for the team. Thanks for playing gents!
The current standings of the Woodhouse Cup can be found here: ECF League Management System | ECF LMS
One match is still to be played next week: Ilkley Dragons vs Sheffield A, but that result may only change the standings mid-table.
