This was the final round of the Group Stage. Raising the requisite 12 players has proved too difficult for Yorkshire at times in this first occurrence of this on-line event, but this time it was Leicestershire’s turn to start the match with defaults, three of them. Meanwhile Daniel Sullivan had managed to line up the full 12. It is a bit hard on the players who do not get a game, though the webmaster is always happy to win by default and so save any hard work!

Leicestershire were outgraded on each board, and grades predicted a score on the top 9 boards of 2-7 in favour of “away” team Yorkshire, which with the three defaults makes 2-10 in Yorkshire’s favour.

Results (with 1 the games to be added later) were:

Bd	Grade	Leicestershire	2½‑9½	Yorkshire	Grade
1	182	Andrew J Morley	0-1	Oskar A Hackner	219	play
2	181	Philip J Horspool	1-0	Peter M Gayson	189	play
3	179	Dave J Bray	1-0	Robert Starley	193	play
4	166	David N Walker	½-½	David Latham	189	play
5	152	Julian Tang	0-1	Douglas Vleeshhouwer	177	play
6	148	Gijs Kruitbosch	0-1	Simon Smith	172	play
7	149	James T Bingham	0-1	Peter Micklethwaite	176	play
8	138	Ben Pourmozafari	0-1	Mark S Allison	168	play
9	130	Andrew B Wilson	0-1	David C Wedge	170	play
10		default	0-1	Ben S Rich	164
11		default	0-1	Joe Varley	159
12		default	0-1	Aaron Rich	100

(Grades are the old January grades.)

Click on “play” to play through the game on screen.

Final ranking in the Group A league table is as follows:

	Li	Mi	De	Yo	Ch	Le	P	W	D	L	F	A	Total
Lincolnshire	X	8	5½	9	8	8	5	4	0	1	38½	21½	8
Middlesex A	4	X	7	7	7½	7½	5	4	0	1	33	26	8
Devon	6½	5	X	7	6	8½	5	3	1	1	33	27	7
Yorkshire	3	5	5	X	7	9½	5	2	0	3	29½	30½	4
Cheshire & N. Wales	4	4½	6	5	X	9	5	1	1	3	28½	31½	3
Leicestershire	4	3½	3½	2½	3	X	5	0	0	5	16½	42½	0

Of the above, Lincolnshire and Middlesex A join Northumberland and Norfolk from Group B, to contest the Final Stage of the Open Championship.

Other match results on the same day were:

Group A

Middlesex A	7½‑4½	Cheshire &NW
Lincolnshire	5½‑6½	Devon

Group B

Northumberland	9½‑8½	Greater Manchester
Bedfordshire & Hertfordshire	2-10	Norfolk
Surrey	5½‑6½	Essex

The semi-final round of the Final Stage is to be in another week’s time, on 08/08/2020.