The Devon first team have won their match against Worcestershire in the Quarter Finals of the Minor Counties. Jon Underwood provides a brief report.
The match was held on Sat 9th May 2026 at Village Hall in Chedzoy. It was a hard fought match and Devon were probably a little fortunate to win. Two players – Tatiana and Shreyas were making their full Devon debuts so congratulations and welcome to them.
The match started off with a disastrous exchange of mistakes followed by a terminal blunder by me. Fortunately Charlie and Shreyas followed my loss with a couple of quick Devon wins. Not that long after, draws were agreed by Trefor and Andy. Another loss left the match level at 3 all.
Chris Gant and Chris Archer-Lock both converted their promising positions after Martin and Richard had somehow swindled draws from lost positions giving us a 6 - 4 lead which Alan soon added to. With us needing just another 1.5 points it might have seemed the match was almost over but it wasn't clear where those points were coming from and I strongly suspected the answer would be nowhere.
Luckily I was wrong. Paul won on time after being a pawn up but perhaps not clearly winning. Finally with the match 8-7 Sean was able to draw his endgame which I thought has been losing at some point and Devon scraped home.
Devon V Worcestershire on the ECF League Management System has the full scores.
Our semi-final will be against Cambridgeshire – very likely in Overton (it's near a station with a direct train from Exeter) on Sunday 14th June. Our opponents have a 2500 player on board one and three more 2100+ players so will be tough to beat.
Report by Jon Underwood (Match Captain)
