Summary

Last season was close, with Eastleigh Unity (now Stoneham) winning the league by 1 point from Southampton A. This season, if anything was even closer, with only one point separating the top three teams and the league title being won by Southampton A on a defaulted game!

How the season ended has caused a bit of controversy, with the defaulted game in mention being outstanding for a couple of months. Although I am probably not the best person to cover this, as I play for Stoneham, I will try to summarise what happened. 

The Southampton A - Southern Water A game took place on the 4th Feb 2003 and not all the games were completed on the night. All games except the Fraser McLeod - Nigel Dicker game were completed soon thereafter and the match stood at 2 points each. Fraser's game against Nigel was not played on, due to the players not being able to fix a date. 

In the meantime all the other league matches were completed, so the importance of this game rose quite considerably. In the end Nigel moved out of the County and defaulted the game. This gave Southampton the extra point to win the league and also meant that Southern Water A were relegated (or they finished bottom of the league at least).

By all accounts Fraser was trying to win the game, as even though the position was not that favourable to him, he understood the importance of it. A key point here, is that leaving this game until the end of the season, did give Southampton options i.e. if they only needed to draw the match to win the league, then Fraser would not have had to risk playing on and losing, and could have offered a draw, This is why the game should have been completed earlier and thus avoided this situation.

I suppose it is a good idea to see what the rules say about playing on games:

Southampton Chess League rule 10 point iii)

If either player so wishes the game shall be adjourned with a sealed move, and played to a finish within three weeks. The player who wishes to continue shall give his opponent choice of venue and must be offered  by his opponent not less that three alternative dates.

Now it is general practice that this rule is not adhered to and probably all clubs have broken this rule at sometime. So I do not want it to seem that I am quoting this rule saying that the players were doing something out of the ordinary. I do think though that it is time this rule was adhered to though, stopping this situation happening again. If this game was completed in the three week period, maybe Nigel would have been able to play, or if not defaulted earlier, which would have meant the title race was not decided on a game defaulted right at the end of the season.  I would welcome players comments on this. One final point is that this was the only loss for Nigel Dicker this season!

Update: I have been updated on the reasons for the initial delay in the continuation of the game and then subsequent default. Without going into the details, there were exceptional circumstances for the game not being played on.

All this aside, the division was hard thought, with all teams losing at least one match and when was the last time a team only lost one match and finished third! The division was split into two, with three teams trying to win the league and three teams trying to avoid relegation. This meant that all teams had something to fight for, which made all matches very competitive. As it stands it has been agreed that Passed Pawn B will not take the promotion spot from Division Two next season (a one off situation I hope), so the league make up will probably be the same next season.

The average grade of the teams is slightly misleading as both Southampton A and Stoneham A had strong ungraded players, returning to competitive chess. But the divide between the top and the bottom is shown quite clearly.

Southampton A had a couple of ex juniors returning to the club this season. Both Tom Remington and Stephen Deall are very talented players, who were a great asset to Southampton. Stephen won the 2002 Basingstoke Major and to be honest I expected him to perform better than he did, but he suffered two losses to Andy Carpenter and Martin Buckley (both tricky players).  Tom Remington was a very promising junior, who stopped playing a few years ago. Although it is difficult to gauge his strength on three games, if he continues to play regularly who will be a dangerous opponent for anyone in this league.

Tom Kazmierski had the best grading performance and his unbeaten four games included wins against Bruce Jenks and John Wilkinson - I am sure that Southampton would like Tom to play more games next season. Fraser had a solid season and Martin Buckmaster proved how hard he is to beat, with 9 draws! You get the feeling that Martin sees so much into the game, but sometimes is a bit too peaceful. I also notice that Southampton stalwart David Bell did not play this season, so to win the league without last year's board one is very impressive.

Stoneham A came very close to retaining their title. The key match was probably the home match against Passed Pawn. In this match Roger Marsh had an advantageous position against Mike Krawczuk, but there was a bit of commotion with another Stoneham player. With this Roger went wrong and a game with a definite draw was lost. A half point from this game would have been enough to draw the match and this would have been meant that Stoneham would have won the league, as they had a better Game Score.

This capped off a disappointing season for Roger, as after last years 8 points from 10 games he only managed 2½ points from 7 games this season. Bill Purkiss had his usual strong performance on board one, only losing the one game to Bruce Jenks and managing to gain his revenge in the return match. Bill also held Dominic Tunks to two draws, who is a player that has caused Bill trouble in the past. Matthew Ludbrook was a great asset for the team, as he is another strong ex junior returning to chess. His wins included a fine game against John Patience. 

Andy Carpenter also had an excellent season, remaining undefeated. Stoneham A also lost the least games all season, losing only 5 games in total. I am sure Stoneham A we will be looking to reclaim the title next season, although this will be under a different name. The club will be situated at Eastleigh Railway Institute, with the new name being Eastleigh Railway Chess Club.

Last season Passed Pawn A finished a distant third in division one. This season, they also finished third, but this was only on game points scored and they were also only one point behind champions Southampton A. Their improved result was probably down to Dominic Tunks playing nine games, rather than the three games he played last season (although Dominic did not have a good season). In addition, Mike Krawczuk added extra fire power on board three, allowing Martin Buckley and Stuart Dean to drop down to board four and five for a lot of games.

This enabled both these players to score over 65%, which in turn meant the team was on average scoring 1.45 points on the bottom two boards. Although this was not enough to win the league, if Dominic had scored slightly heavier I believe Passed Pawn A would have won the league this year. I am sure that next season Passed Pawn will again be challenging for the title.

Stuart Dean had the best result, remaining unbeaten. Drawing twice against Juha Nevalainen was probably his best results.  Stephen Le Fevre was a valuable reserve, winning two and drawing one game. Martin Buckley was the other high scorer and his wins included one against Southampton's Stephen Deall.

With their fourth place Winchester A proved that they are back to being a Division One team. Although the bottom of the division was as close as the top, Winchester always seemed to be safe. Khaled Esmat proved that he is a good board one, scoring 50%. His four wins were the double against Tom Anderson and Bruce Jenks, but his four losses were also the double against Bill Purkiss and Dominic Tunks! He also drew twice against Martin Buckmaster. 

David Kinsler had a nice return to form, scoring 50%. His two wins were against Fraser McLeod and Mike Krawczuk, which were two nice scalps. David and Khaled scored six of the nine wins for Winchester, as the other players found the going tough (although Mike White performed above his grade). I think that Winchester are strong enough to survive in division one, but probably need to strengthen their team by two players, if they want to challenge the three teams that finished above them.

Southampton B had four players who played all 10 games, whilst Gillian Moore played 7 of the 10. Having the improving Tom Anderson playing board one for the B team, rather the middle boards for the A team helped the B team have someone strong enough to survive on the top board, Tom did very well to score 45% and his one win was against the highest graded player in the league Dominic Tunks. 

Les Allen and Iain Stenhouse also performed well, with Les being very solid on board two. Southampton B would have benefited with Richard Perrin and Alec Samuels playing more than one game, as Gillian Moore and John Wiseman struggled on the lower boards.

Four Southern Water players had a good season, with Philip Barber and Nigel Dicker especially performing well. Southern Water also always scored at least 1½ points in every match and lost four matches by the narrowest of margins. If they had managed to turn at least one of these matches into a draw, they would not have finished bottom. 

The match that could have saved them, was the one against Southampton A - but I have already covered that!