Winter Butterfly  -  16h    17/11/02

From Debbie Evans-Quek 

Dear David

 Could you please circulate the news that:

 A) Leighton Williams achieved his IM title over 13 games.  An amazing result.  The men's team drew the last match 2/2 with wins by Leighton and Suan on boards 1 and 4.

 B) The women drew the final match 1.5/1.5 against Peru.  Annie drew with black but was unlucky not to gain the full point on board 1 and Kathy won smoothly on board 2 Suzie lost on 3, giving us 20 game points in total.  This was a good result given that the same team had beaten Scotland 2.5/0.5 in an earlier round.

 The 20 points was enough to gain us the Bronze Team medal in category 3 behind Scotland who achieved silver.  Turkey won gold with 21 points.

 This is the first time that Wales has won a team medal in the history of Welsh Chess.  A report has been circulated to newspapers in Wales and to both the BCM and Chess magazine.

                        Many Thanks from Debbie

 Thank you for the report, Debbie and congratulations to the Women's team on their fine performance.

DJ

From Alec Wood 

Dai

You may wish to know (may already know?) that Leighton's game against
Grechihin was featured in Leonard Barden's column in Saturday's Guardian.
Barden mentions that he achieved an IM result and remarks that he plays in
bravura style.

regards
Alec 

Thanks Alec.

DJ 

League Review.

 We all know about the strong teams.  Gwent is very open this year, but its pretty certain the Cardiff, Barry, Nidum and Cardigan will be there or there abouts in their respective leagues at the end of the season.  So I thought we would start by looking at some of the lower divisions.  The first of these is East Glamorgan Div IV.  Many thanks to Alec Wood for regularly updating the league tables, etc, on the Barry site: www.barrychessclub.org.uk   I have shamelessly swiped the information from that site.

 East Glam have three divisions of ten teams and one (division 4) of twelve.  At the end of the season three teams go up and three go down.  In the top three divisions its all play all twice.  In division 4 its all play all once then the top six and bottom six are separated into two sections and they each play the other teams in their sections again.  Points gained in the first 11 games are carried forward.

 This year Barry Gambits already look clear favourites for the divisional title while Pontypridd Dau and Pentyrch B have opened out a gap between themselves and their rivals in the promotion chase.  One effect of the format is that things at the top can change very rapidly in the last five games, when there are no easy games as the top teams play each other again.  The loss of a player, or someone having used up their allocation of games can seriously weaken teams at the sharp end of the season.

 Positions as at 16 Nov 2002. 

                                                  P    W    D    L     Mtch    Game Pts

Barry Gambits                         6    5    1    0        11           23.5 

Pontypridd Dau                        6    6    0    0       12            20.5

Pentyrch B                                6    4    1    1        9              19

Aberdare Scorpions               6    3    1    2        7               16.5

North Cardiff Hornets              6    3    0    3        6               15.5

Bridgend C                               5    2    1    2       5               14

Barry Saracens                        5    1    1    3        3               11

Llantwit Dragons                      6    1    1    4        3                 9.5

Rhondda                                   5    1    0    4        2                8

Cardiff Crowns                         3    2    0    1        4                7.5

Porthcawl B                              4    0    0    4        0                 5.5

Barry Island                               4    0    0    4        0                 2.5

The results of two games in the Barry Saracens v Rhondda match are still outstanding.  I'm not sure if these are played on or going for adjudication.