The ACT Transfer Championship was another successful ACTJCL tournament, with 78 players (39 teams) taking part. At this stage I don't have the full results, but the tournament was won by Justin Chow and Etienne Masle-Farquhar (10/11).My own team (Press, Shaun & Press, Harry) started off well 4/4 until we got outsmarted by a team of 11 year olds. Noticing that I was using a lot of my time to help my partner, they waited until I was behind on the clock and stalled. This nullified the effect of having a strong player advising a weaker one. The most drastic effect of this tactic was when I needed to drop a piece to block a check and I had none in front of me. As I was behind on the clock, my partners opponent simply "sat", so my partner couldn't capture anything to pass to me. Of course this strategy was assisted by the use of digital clocks (sacrilege!) which took the uncertainty out of such decisions.
We then lost 4 games in a row, before recovering with 3 wins to score 7/11. I'm not sure where that placed us, but we did pick up a trophy for best placed Under 2000 (combined ratings) team.
2 comments:
Well, Shaun, the tactic adopted by these younger players seems to negate the assertion in your post of 11 November that "the transfer skills exhibited by the current crop of juniors is pretty woeful." :)
Perhaps the point is that there is a difference between "skill" and a dirty rotten trick! ;-)
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