CHESS RESULT (4): Tiverton 6 Exeter 2 (Newman Cup)

Exeter, guests of Tiverton for a Newman Cup fixture on Wednesday 18 November, received a surprise trouncing by 6 points to 2.

The Newman is a relatively recent innovation within the Devon Chess world.  It is a rapidplay competition and each member of a team plays his opposite number twice (once with the White pieces and once with Black) during a match between two teams of four.  Each player has half an hour in which to make all moves.  If a player runs out of time (s)he loses.

Ivor Annetts on board one was 14 grading points lower than his opponent, Simon Waters.  Tiverton's Jon Duckham, board four, had the same margin of superiority in his games against Tom Stephenson.  Both John Morrison (board 2) and Keith Atkins (board 3) had opponents of roughly the same grade as themselves.

In the first round, as expected, Jon was the first to win; Ivor's position collapsed. 1-1.  It then looked as though John would win and that Keith would lose.

John Morrison is an amazing rapidplay player.  He thinks extremely quickly.  In this game he had only used about 7 minutes when his opponent ran out of time.  Keith was a piece down but his opponent was extremely short of time.  This led to the piece being regained before Keith, too, won on time.  3-1 to Tiverton at the end of round one.

In round 2 the initial fortunes were reversed with Ivor winning and Jon losing.  This meant that to secure victory in the match Tiverton just needed half a point from either of the two remaining matches.  The photograph shows these two games in their final stages with Keith in the foreground and John having just very cleverly refuted an apparently fatal attack.

Both players ultimately won on time - John had 17 minutes left on his clock! - giving Tiverton a magnificent 6-2 victory.