Online 4NCL rounds 3 and 4

Two weeks ago, Horsham faced Crewe in the online 4NCL.
On board 4 Marian was in a bit of trouble after his opponent managed to grab a couple of queen side pawns with tactics. Unfortunately, those pawns marched and Marian had to surrender.
On board 3 Richard played against the Nimzowitsch defence and both players castled kingside with fianchettoed bishops in front of their kings. Richard pushed an attack that hacked up black's pawns and had some initiative before his opponent turned the tide and managed to use those now semi-open files to create a lot of pressure that brought home the point.
On board 1 my opponent played the Kalashnikov Sicilian in an unusual move order. The position was even until my opponent missed a sneaky tactic that won me the exchange. From there I managed to trade, trade, trade and promote to win the game, despite some accurate endgame play from my opponent.
This left Chris going on board 2 who had played the Dutch against the English but it ended up pretty symmetrical. The game swung both ways with Chris having a promising initiative only for his opponent to find all the right answers and to use a build-up of central pawns to push through for a win.
This left the final match score as 3-1 to Crewe.

Last week Horsham played Falmouth and Truro in the online 4NCL.
First to finish on board 3 was Nick who declined the Queen's Gambit and got to a level middle game. He then traded to get a central pawn block that he pushed forcing his opponent to give up the exchange to stop them promoting. With two rooks against a rook and bishop it was a tricky endgame to convert but Nick kept up the pressure and his opponent couldn't keep up so lost on time.
Second to finish on board 1 was Dix who was played the Benoni, but this settled into a level middle game with both sides castling kingside. Dix tried to stir up trouble by pushing his g-pawn but his opponent managed to take advantage to win the game in the resulting tactical fireworks.
Third to finish was Chris on board 2 who was playing the Italian game. Chris managed to open up the g-file and seemed ready to start an attack but his opponent had remembered, "an attack on the wing should be met by a counter in the centre" and so attacked down the centre and those central pawns were enough to win the game.
Last to finish was Richard on board 4. His was a must a win game with the score 2-1 to Falmouth. He was also playing the Italian game and had out calculated his opponent to win a pawn in the centre. With some careful trading the game headed into a knight endgame and with the extra pawn and some accurate play Richard converted smoothly.
Final score Horsham 2-2 Falmouth and Truro.

If you want to follow the Horsham team on Tuesday night, the player list will be up shortly before the 7:30pm kick off: http://www.4nclresults.co.uk/2019-20/online/5/3/export/

If you want to see the table: http://www.4nclresults.co.uk/2019-20/media/online/prog-div3.html