2015 World Senior Team Ch 24 Feb-4 Mar

[David Sedgwick]

Tischbierek has a totally crushing position but is making inaccuracies, missing easy wins, the latest by 34 Rxc4 with Re1 winning the queen. As played, he's still winning but it's not so trivial and he may yet mess up.

At this moment that looks like a brilliant prediction.

[Jonathan Rogers]

yes, sadly so.

Well, er, oh dear, but anyway how did Englands do today?

[Simon Brown]

Looks like Timoshenko missed mate in 2 and took a perpetual! Could have been much worse.

[David Sedgwick]

Tischbierek has a totally crushing position but is making inaccuracies, missing easy wins, the latest by 34 Rxc4 with Re1 winning the queen. As played, he's still winning but it's not so trivial and he may yet mess up.

At this moment that looks like a brilliant prediction.

If the live board is to be believed, not without the half point being handed back and forth one final time.

It has to be said that it's looking good for Slovakia now.

[Jonathan Rogers]

So England v Germany will not be a top board (live) match, presumably. We might spend the rest of the tournament looking at Slovakia's games, hoping against hope that their opponents will actually play any wins that might come along ...

[Nigel Short]

Going back to the 50+ section, I hope this is not a silly question, but why is Terry Chapman playing for England 1, rather than having a GM like Flear or Plaskett in reserve? I suppose that is another way of asking how selection was done for England 1 and England 2.

Terry is paying. Without him we wouldn't have a strong team. I, for one, certainly would not be playing. Hope that answers your question.

[Jonathan Rogers]

Looks like Timoshenko missed mate in 2 and took a perpetual! Could have been much worse.

Goodness! Total collapse from both players under the pressure then.

[NickFaulks]

I hope Emil Sutovsky wasn't watching that game!

[Tim Harding]

So England v Germany will not be a top board (live) match, presumably. We might spend the rest of the tournament looking at Slovakia's games, hoping against hope that their opponents will actually play any wins that might come along ...

Tomorrow Slovakia play Scotland, probably the only remaining team capable of stopping them.

England 1 play Thuringen and England-2 play Germany.
Boensch may have to play as Tischbierek has gone from hero to zero and is probably in cardiac arrest. We can only be grateful that Timoscenko was so shell-shocked that he missed his own mating chance.

The results from Round 5 are not posted yet (1350 GMT); maybe after lunch one of you guys on the spot can give us a resume of what happened with the English and Scots teams, please?

[LawrenceCooper]

The round 5 results are here: http://www.schachfestival.de/world-seni ... =2&runde=5

[Keith Arkell]

imagine the arguments as to who should play the bigger matches if you did have a fifth GM ...

I know this was only a joke, but if team spirit could win you gold we'd have it in the bag already.

We even had Matthew Sadler and Natasha Regan fly into town for a couple of days to give us some moral support. Very nice gesture and great to see them both. Let's just hope that the outcome of this thing at least gets back into our own hands at some point before the end...

Meanwhile thanks guys for the continued support on here.

[Keith Arkell]

Was it really that bad though? - it just looked to me (although I'm pretty rubbish) as if you moved the wrong rook to d1 so either Na3, Rad1 or Nd2, Rad1 would have been ok, but after Red1 it just didn't look that nice to play and the ending just looked miserable to try and get anything out of, with increasingly there only being bad moves to choose from.

I faffed about too much, David, when the simple and obvious 12 Nd2 leads to a big advantage in all lines. Even after a lot of crap moves I am still fine if I play 18 Nd2.

I guess if we could rule out ever playing a poor game then chess would lose it's sporting element.

We had a smooth 3.5 : 0.5 win today v the Danes btw.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

imagine the arguments as to who should play the bigger matches if you did have a fifth GM ...

I know this was only a joke, but if team spirit could win you gold we'd have it in the bag already.

We even had Matthew Sadler and Natasha Regan fly into town for a couple of days to give us some moral support. Very nice gesture and great to see them both. Let's just hope that the outcome of this thing at least gets back into our own hands at some point before the end...

Meanwhile thanks guys for the continued support on here.

Did Natasha get to play some chess? I see Matthew Sadler did. When you said earlier you had scored 9/9 in the blitz, I assumed it was an individual event. I see it was sort of a 'team' event with pairs and you were paired with Matthew in a team called 'Young England'...

http://www.schachfestival.de/world-seni ... kings.html

Round by round pairings here:

http://www.schachfestival.de/world-seni ... rings.html

[Keith Arkell]

Hi Christopher,

Yes, it was teams of 2,not 'pairs'. We each played our own game, 2 game matches. Matthew and me ( 'young England') just pipped [old] 'England' ( Short (8.5/9), Chapman). A bit of fun, but it was FIDE rated and had quite a formal prize giving, with a wacking great England flag for us to hold

http://www.schachfestival.de/world-seni ... kings.html

[Chris Rice]

If some team can at least draw with Slovakia our tie breaks are likely to take England 1 through to victory in the 50+ section http://www.schachfestival.de/world-seni ... ft&tngid=2 but there aren't many teams capable of doing that. Scotland 1 may be one of our best hopes and they play Slovakia in Round 6. England 1 will have to forget all that and just focus on winning their match and hope that destiny takes a hand.

1. Scotland 1 - Slovakia
2. SC Forchheim e.V. - England 1
3. England 2 - Germany

In the 65+ section England are in 19th place and playing Berlin chess club on Board 6 in Round 6 today. Berlin will outrate them on all four boards by an average of I guess 100 Elo.