Our most recent Thames Valley League matches have provided good news for the A and C teams.

Up to this point the TVA team had won one match by default, along with two draws and a loss. Our fifth match saw us facing Hammersmith, a much improved club who are very active both on social media and in the local community, and have recruited a lot of strong new members, including two RJCC coaches.

We were relieved to see that they weren’t at full strength against us, and, with three games still to finish we had a 5-0 lead thanks to wins from Gavin, Mike, Raghu, Richard T and myself. Although we lost the other three games we had finally won a match over the board. As it happens there’s some doubt about the eligibility of one of the victorius Hammersmith players, who is not on their list of registrations on the league website. If that result is overturned that will make the score 6-2 in our favour.

The following week we had another home match, this time the return fixture against Ealing A. You may recall that when we visited Ealing we were very fortunate to come away with a draw, despite outgrading our opponents on every board. This time we made no mistake, managing to avoid defeat in every game. There were wins for Chris W (in 10 moves), Raghu and Richard T, while Mike, Julien, John Burke, Ian and myself (in 5 minutes) all shared the point. So, two convincing wins in two weeks leave us sitting proudly, if only temporarily, on top of the league.

Meanwhile, our B team, weakened by renominations, travelled to the north western wilds of Uxbridge, where they suffered a narrow defeat, losing the only decisive game of the match. The draws were scored by Seb, Bertie, Ian, Stuart and Masoud.

Finally, there was some good news from the C team who finally managed to get on the scoreboard for the season with an away win against Ealing C, courtesy of draws from Dan, Barry and Laurie and wins from George and Ken.