For players who like long games of chess, but have difficulty finding the time to get to their local club, or to weekend tournaments, the online league hosted by the Internet Chess Club is difficult to beat. Teams are made up of up to 6 players with 4 playing in each match. Each player negotiates with his individual opponent as to when the game will be played during each week, and as cumbersome as this sounds it works really well. This is due mainly to the fact that most of the players really want to play and will try their hardest to arrange their games. I'm in Australia at GMT+10 and I haven't had any trouble arranging games with players from the Americas or Europe.
This particular season my team doesn't seem to be playing well which is unfortunate. I have been playing below par, and maybe a move up to board 1 of the first division has been a bit too much for me. I am definitely competitive on board 2, but board 1 is really tough. We have a new guy who found things difficult to start with, but has now found his feet with an excellent win in our last match, but the team as a whole is definitely underperforming. Take a look at my last game, a horrible loss made worse for the fact it was played early on a Sunday morning when I'd have preferred to be sleeping. I had problems with calculation and missed a number of my opponents chances, but he was never worse and opened the position to his advantage excellently. I have had some experience of this opening recently with games against FM Erik Teichmann and IM James Morris in the past 6 months but it didn't help.
So apologies to my team, I will try to make up for this in the future, though all we can do is try our best for our teams.
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