Lancashire 9 – 7 Essex, 13 June 2009

Played at Gaddesby, Leicestershire.

Sussex 5 – 11 Essex, 7 March 2009

Played at Hassocks.

Essex 9½ – 6½ Middlesex, 31 January 2009

Played at Wanstead House.

		ESSEX			MIDDLESEX
Board	Colour	Home Team	Grade	Score	Away Team	Grade	Score
1	W	Kevin White	173	½	Peter Ackley	172	½
2	B	Jeff Goldberg	172	1	Steven Coles	172	0
3	W	Ivor Smith	167	½	Nevil Chan	169	½
4	B	Tim Hebbes	167	½	David Ebbett	168	½
5	W	Philip Gregory	167	½	George Dickson	168	½
6	B	Martin McCall	163	1	D Ian Calvert	162	0
7	W	David Spearman	160	½	Michael Tasker	163	½
8	B	Larry Marden	160	1	Martin Lee	160	0
9	W	Kanwal Bhatia	160	1	Peter Morton	139	0
10	B	Peter Doye	158	0	Anthony Fulton	157	1
11	W	Syd Kalinsky	157	½	Jim Falzarano	155	½
12	B	Terry Whitton	154	½	Martin Crichton	152	½
13	W	John White	154	½	Jonathan Kay	148	½
14	B	Neville Twitchell	153	0	Charles McAleenan	141	1
15	W	Howard Grist	148	1	Bill Phillips	143	0
16	B	David Millward	147	½	Joe Franks	153	½
		TOTAL – Home		9½	TOTAL – Away		6½

Kent 7½ – 7½ Essex, 24 January 2009

The board 15 game between David Brock and Geoff Bishop was ruled void by the Controller.  Essex’s appeal against this decision was unsuccessful.

Essex 8 – 8 Surrey, 3 January 2009

The first default conceded by the team since February 1996 contributed to a match being tied that really should have been won, although the unceaten run continued.

Essex 8 – 8 Sussex, 13 December 2008

Report by David Brock.

On paper it seemed that we out graded Sussex by over 147 points as a team an average of 9.18 points per person.  So it would seem that if we played to our grades then we had every chance of pulling off another win.  However I have now thrown the statistics out of the window as Saturday’s match goes to show no matter what the grades are you have to perform over the board.  From the off it seemed that Sussex were taking this game rather seriously as they even had a travelling sub and wanted to know the team before even the boards were set up.  They even had an official checking the official to make sure the team was down correctly.

Middlesex 6½ – 9½ Essex, 15 November 2008

Played at the Exmouth Arms.

Essex 11½ – 4½ Kent, 1 November 2008

The good start was continued with a comfortable win against a Kent team which was outgraded and heavily outscored.

Surrey 7½ – 8½ Essex, 27 September 2008

Report by David Brock to his squad.

Well guys the first Match is out of the way and I can say with a big smile on my face that we managed to beat Surrey on Saturday 8½ to 7½.  So a big thanks you to all who took part it was a very close and hard fought match.

For those of you who were no there or left early the match went something along these lines. On paper we outgraded Surrey by a massive 96 points which is 2/3 of a player so I was quite optimistic when the match started.  However it soon became apparent that grades do not count over the board. The games started and it looked like Syd Kalinsky would have a wasted journey as his opponent did not show until about 45 minutes after the clocks had started.   After the first few results which were all draws it became apparent that we had a fight on our hands.  With 6 games still remaining we were 2 points behind Surrey and a loss was looking on the cards however bit by bit we managed to pull it back and thankfully I can say I managed to win my own game on bottom board.