Saturday, January 17, 2009

Seven Samurai

For the time honoured reason that the good players were unavailable, I made a rare appearance for the Surrey first team last Wednesday in the match at Coulsdon.

Despite the fact we were outgraded on every board, the average difference being more than 20 ECF points in the home team's favour, we actually led 3.5 - 2.5 as the end of the evening approached. The two games that remained to be decided were a dodgy looking position on bottom board and young Martin Smith in the midst of a furious time scramble so any match result was still possible. Fortunately Streaham's answer to Magnus Carlsen held his nerve and mated his opponent with just seconds of the session remaining thus securing for his side a very enjoyable victory.

I mention all this because on the way to the match Angus told me that over the weekend just gone a total of seven S&BCCers had turned out for a county open team. Not bad, I thought, for a relatively small club but what I found even more remarkable was that the seven were spread across five different sides.

Our representatives were,

T.C. - Surrey
Phillip Gregory - Essex
Peter Kemp - Sussex
Barry Morris - Hertfordshire
Carsten Pedersen - Middlesex
Andrew Stone - Middlesex
Venkat - Hertfordshire

Impressive but surely not a record. Can our readers suggest what that would be?

1 comment:

ejh said...

A round flat vinyl thing with a hole in the middle.