Epsom Salties: 4NCL Online - Season 13, Round 5

4NCL Online - 17th March 2026 - Division 3 and 4 - Round 5

4 boards, Online

Epsom Salties 1    3.5 - 0.5    Wells Globetrotters 2

Epsom Salties 2    1 - 3    English Deaf Chess Association

Epsom Salties 3    4 - 0 Isle of Wight C

A slightly different format to my report, I will start the report with two puzzles. Black (Venky and Daniel) to move in both occasions, unfortunately they both missed the winning move. The solutions are at the end and I will discuss what I find interesting about both positions.

Another interesting night of 4NCL - I had thought it was clear that this was potentially a

tricky night for all 3 teams.

Well Salties 1 proved me wrong, Venky swept his opponent away in 24 moves and was

finished for the night while we were just leaving the opening. He faced a Trompowsky,

which can be tricky to face. He chased white's king out into the open for the kill. This

was followed by Mike bringing out his Sicilian (accelerated dragon) and quickly took

control and his opponent threw in the towel after 32 moves. I faced the Benko gambit, I

tried a counter gambit and we had an interesting close game, where I was a bit ahead

but we had a three-fold repetition after I queened. So a Salties 1 victory at 2.5-0.5.

Sammy then added a big cherry to make it 3.5-0.5. He faced a Benoni, these are often

slow tactical games, that Sammy skilfully played through, it was tight, until one error by

his opponent, and he immediately grabbed 2 free pawns and marched confidently to

victory. This moved the Salties 1 into second place (promotion spot) the next match will

be the key match for promotion. This could give us a couple of extra games this season.

Salties 2 unfortunately went down 3-1. John had a bit of a strong game until he fell for a

fork and then went downhill. Tiara, now a very solid player, played a Sicilian but neither

side could make progress with an early draw at 21 moves. Leia has the reputation of

pulling draws out of lost positions, round 5 was no exception for her, she faced a Nimzo-

Indian. The board cleared quickly and her opponent slowly took charge - but Leia held

on and eventually the opponent blundered to give Leia the draw. Alex fat fingered his

queen into danger to go down. Salties 2 dropped to 11th.

Salties 3 unfortunately went down 4-0 - this was a harsh scoreline. Three players had

clear leads at some point and there was even a missed mate in one. Lucy was always

behind but she doggedly defended to make her opponent work for the victory. Gary's

game was wild, but it was a good attack on black's king defence that faltered in the end.

Aditya was ahead, he tried some nice aggressive, slightly unusual moves, these are the

sort of moves that a good player needs to find - unfortunately he didn't look far enough

and they failed. This leaves Salties 3 in 29th. I am hopeful that we will get a victory

before the season ends.

Solutions and discussion on puzzles

Venky’s game: 1. …. Qg5+!! 2. fxQ Rg3+ 3. Kh4 hxg5#

Daniel’s game: 1. ….NxNd5 2. exNd5 BxBh4 (if BxBe7 NxBe7) – Black is up a Bishop

So what is particularly interesting about these two puzzles? Did you solve them easily? We have had chats within the club about learning pattern recognition from doing puzzles, but what about converting them during real games - where you don't know where there is a 'puzzle'; to be solved.

Venky had a real showy one with a nice Queen sacrifice and a forced checkmate. But he didn’t need to see it, he was comfortable and won soon after that position.

However, I have shown the pattern seen in Daniel’s game several times in my various reports. It’s my aim that all of the Salties and other Epsom players will recognise this straight away. The pattern has almost universally missed by our and the opponent players in the 4NCL games. Daniel missed it here, and could have turned a loss into a win.

To help with the pattern recognition, here are the key pieces below. The White Knight (or pawn) will be defended, but it does ’t matter. The key is that the White Bishop is undefended (or as in Daniel’s game under-defended). I have also shown probably the most common version of this puzzle in the French Advance (the e-pawn is a goner). I have been in this position many times.

So when you are doing puzzles, a Queen sacrifice position appears many times, but I am not sure I have seen the above pattern in puzzles. In our three seasons of 4NCL, spotting the above pattern would have gained us a few points, but missing queen sacrifices has had no effect on our scores. I have reported the above position several times (2 examples in Season 13, round 1; Season 12, Round 7 (proviso, I haven’t actually checked for Queen sacrifices – but I don’t remember any others).

Alistair Mackenzie