Russell Sherwood Saturday, February 29, 2020
Excluding the Swedish match we have commenced 33 Friendly matches to date.
29 of these have been completed. Our results have been interesting......I utilise two methods to score matches. The first of these is the simple board score and in the regard we have:
Won 9
Drawn 3
Lost 17
Not too encouraging, although when ratings are taken into account the situation is somewhat different. Here I use an expected score based upon the average rating difference in each game. On this basis our results have been :
Won 17
Draw 0
Lost 12
What is even more interesting is that 6 of these losses were in our first 8 games, giving us a 15-0-6 since mid 2014.
Why is this? Much has been down to the WCCF attitude to Friendly matches - that they are a training and development event. Almost all of our senior players "earned their spurs" in Friendly events.
So our current 4 events
Wales - Italy 25-55
Here we gave away 120 rating points on average, so the result was always likely to a formality. Congratulations to the 6 players who recorded wins!
Wales - Germany 15.5-25.5
Many games still to play but we suffered on the lower boards here
Wales - USA 11.5-12.5
A close match! The bottom boards have set up the team well, can the Top boards bring it home?
Wales - Czech Republic 6-11
Closer than it seems with a number of "postmen" on the middle boards!
FriendliesTournament Results
