J4NCL: Suffolk promoted to top tier

Another successful season for Suffolk Junior Chess in the Junior 4NCL online league resulted in promotion to Division One, and second place on finals evening! The promotion was our third in four seasons of J4NCL, and followed narrowly missing out last season.

With a smaller squad (Arthur Dannatt, Rowan Kent, Oliver Ferris, Amy John, Harry Hartshorn, Mackenzie Harvey-Gibson, Kalp Vyas, and Luke Houchell) than in previous seasons, we reverted to entering a single team, which meant a jump for some players from Division 4 to Division 2.

In the regular season a very tight Group B had 4 teams finishing within 2 Match Points of each other, with all vying for promotion in the last match. Our opponents, Hilsmark Juniors, were top at the start of the evening, so only a win for Suffolk would get us into the top 2. That win dropped our opponents to 4th overall, and we finished second – level with the group winners on 5 wins, 1 draw and 1 defeat, but an 8-0 win in the final round put Colchester B just 2 game points ahead. On finals evening, however, Suffolk won our semi-final against the Group A winners, while Colchester lost to the eventual Division 2 champions Bishop Blunders.

With 3 wins against players more than 400 rating points higher, Kalp outperformed all expectations (see example game below) and became a regular in the team. Arthur was ever-present and topped the team points table, Oliver had the highest average points per game, while Amy won the third most points. Rowan and Harry won all their games when they were available to play, while Kenzie’s 1.5 points in round 2 was the difference between winning and losing.

With 10+5 Rapidplay matches on Thursday evenings, next season starts in the New Year and we will be looking for more players to join the squad.