Four Nations Chess League
BCM has entered four teams into the prestigious Four Nations Chess League (4NCL). The imaginatively titled BCM Dragons, Rhinos, Hippos and Eagles (A, B, C and D in other words!) took BCM back into 4NCL competition for the first time since 1999 when the B.C.M. team morphed into The ADs.
The Dragons (Captained by John Foley) led by James Holland, Richard Webb, Ken Coates, Tom Farrand, Keith Richardson, Matthew Wadsworth, Jim Wadsworth and Maria Yurenok took on the might of heavily sponsored Wood Green Hilsmark Kingfisher 1 in round one and came away with two draws after Richard Webb held Jonathan Rowson (despite having an Irish pawn centre on the c-file!) and Ken Coates halved-out with Nick Pert after a full-monty seven hour session. Twelve(!) year-old Matthew Wadsworth played superbly versus GM Chris Ward and only lost after 74 moves falling into a mating net in a Q&K vs Q&K ending.
The Sunday round versus Guildford 2 was even better with draws for James Holland, Ken Coates, Matthew Wadsworth and Maria Yurenok and excellent wins from Colin Purdon and Keith Richardson in a match where BCM was out-rated by 130 Elo points on average per board. This allowed BCM to square the match 4-4.
The BCM Rhinos (Captained by Matthew Shaw) notched up victories in rounds one and two and are joint leaders of Division Three. The team (over both rounds) consisted of Colin Purdon, Neil Bridge, Giampiero Amato, Alex Stille, Alain Dekker, John Foley and Peter Tart. The Rhinos have excellent prospects of gaining promotion to Division Two.
The BCM Hippos (Captained by Bob Kane) had a tough weekend against strong teams and consisted of Daniel Sparkes, Majid Jeffries, Jim Stayt, Matthew Shaw, Kumar Dixit, Maurice Lawson, Bob Kane and Louise Head narrowly beat 3Cs 2 on the Saturday and then went down to 2-4 Guildford 3 on the Sunday.
The youthful BCM Eagles (Captained by the less-than-youthful Team Manager, John Upham) just lost 2.5-3.5 to Cambridge University 3 in round one and then 1.5-4.5 to Metropolitan on Sunday. Members of the Eagles included Bob Kane, Louise Head, Mike Cresswell, Matthew McLachlan, Harry Grieve, Jeremy Jones and Christine Coates.
The registered players for the team can be found here
Rounds Three and Four will be on January 12th/13th at Staverton Park and Daventry, near Leicester.
BCM 4NCL Team Members
BCM 4NCL Team Members
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