There was good news and bad news this week.

The good news was that Maks agreed a draw with his Surbiton opponent from last week’s match, which meant that, although Masoud had to resign his game, we scored an important win.

We had no such luck, though, against a strong Ealing Juniors team. Boards 1 and 6 were quickly agreed drawn, and Richard T scored an excellent win on Board 8. There was little joy elsewhere. Sampson and I both escaped from lost positions to give us a 3-2 lead, but the other three games all looked bad. Chris was never really in the game, while Julien was outplayed in the ending. Raghu missed a drawing chance in a complicated position during the time scramble, but by then it was too late anyway.

Congratulations to Ealing Juniors on their victory. Thanks to all who played, and also to Maks, who came along at 10 minutes notice in case Julien, who was held up in traffic, didn’t make it in time, and to Adrian who came along to watch.

	Richmond A		Ealing Juniors
1	Gavin Wall 223	½:½	Viktor Stoyanov 206
2	Julien Shepley 174	0:1	Christopher Tombolis 183
3	Chris White 177	0:1	Jacob Yoon 188
4	Richard James 167	½:½	Haotian Wu 183
5	Raghu Kamath 169	0:1	Tim Foster 165
6	Ian McLeod 159	½:½	Nishchal Thatte 169
7	Sampson Low 160	½:½	Nilomi Desai 159
8	Richard Thursby 152	1:0	Boris Stoyanov 140
		3:5

Earlier this week Ealing Juniors drew with Surbiton, who were a player short, while Ealing A crushed a very weak Wimbledon team who defaulted the bottom two boards.

While Wimbledon B, our next opponents, have lost all their games, the battle to avoid the probable second relegation place is very tight. Our match against Ealing A in April will be crucial.