As the C team was demolishing scraping past the D team, three Division 1 games were also taking place.
Chris 1-0 John
John played his third game with the black pieces in three weeks. After opposite side castling Chris’s Q-side attack proved stronger than John’s effort on the K-side, so the result for John was the same as the other two – see game.
Steve 1-0 Marc
Steve looked under pressure in the middle-game, but he neatly untangled his pieces and won a pawn, after which the result was never in doubt.
Ravi 1-0 Richard
Ravi against Richard was a tight affair, and at the point where the spectators started to get interested (because all other games were over) Ravi had the advantage of the two bishops in the sort of closed position where it’s not much of an advantage. With 30 second increments in play it looked as if the slow maneuvering would be going on past midnight, when Ravi sacced a couple of pawns to win a piece, then neatly got his whole team back into defence to make sure that none of Richard’s potential passed pawns – I counted three possibilities – were dangerous. Finally Richard blundered a pawn and resigned.