I woke up yesterday morning to an email from the Wimbledon B captain telling me that they only had five players, so would be conceding the bottom three boards. A pity in a way, as we had our strongest team of the season.

As it happens, Max and I both had heavy colds and didn’t want to play anyway, and John Burke didn’t seem too keen to make his seasonal debut for us.

	Richmond A		Wimbledon B
1	Gavin Wall 223	1:0	John Wilcox 148
2	Mike Healey 212	1:0	Mike Williams 135
3	Julien Shepley 174	1:0	Pawel Slonczuk 125
4	Richard Thursby 152	0:1	Alex Brett 109
5	Chris White 177	1:0	Martin Lake 98
6		1:0
7		1:0
8		1:0
		7:1

We switched our boards 4 and 5 with Wimbledon’s agreement because both Julien and Chris were very keen to finish in one session.

Our top three boards wasted little time in bringing home the full point, but Wimbledon’s boards 4 and 5 both played well above their modest grades. Chris played a speculative queen sacrifice which probably shouldn’t have worked, but his opponent erred, falling for a back rank mate. Richard was outplayed positionally and adjourned in a minor piece ending with level material but he had pawn weaknesses and a shortage of good squares for his pieces. His computer confimed that further resistance would be futile so he resigned this morning.

The other Div 1 matches this week saw champions elect Hammersmith A score an important win against Wimbledon A while Surbiton A crushed Ealing A.

In the battle for 4th, 5th and 6th place (assuming Surbiton will get enough points to finish in the top 3) we’re now on 5½/10 with Ealing and Surbiton to come. Ealing Juniors are on 4/10 with Wimbledon B and Surbiton to come, and Ealing are on 4/9 with Hammersmith, Surbiton and ourselves to come. So we need to score another point to be safe. The next match is critical: away to Ealing A on 8 April. Make sure you’re available for this one!