What a week it’s been! Some more great news: this time from the Surrey League.

Huw Williams reports:

“Wimbledon 4 came to visit us at the Roebuck. We won the toss and Eamon decided to play black. The result was a 4-2 win.

“Eamon won (Rook and 3 pawns v Rook and 1 pawn), Marcel caught his opponent in a nice pin to win, Paul won in 19 moves and Rob ground out a neat ending.

“Well done to Marcel and Ron on their first league match. Our opponents were very gracious and enjoyed the layout. (I had changed it and it worked very well.)

“Thank you for your support.”

	Richmond		Wimbledon 4
1	Eamon Rashid-Farokhi 144	1:0	Alex Boitier –
2	Masoud Molazadeh 129	0:1	Pawel Slonczuk 133
3	Marcel Holowienko –	1:0	Emanuel Lowcock 116
4	Paul Evans –	1:0	John Sprackett 109
5	Rob Hunter –	1:0	Martin Lake 92
6	Ron Bilkhu –	0:1	Omar Selim 68
		4:2

It’s great to see four of our new members playing. Marcel is a talented teenager who will no doubt improve very quickly over the next few years. If you know me well you’ll know my (highly controversial and unpopular) opinion most young people would benefit from starting competitive chess later rather than earlier, and that, from my observations over many years, those who start taking chess seriously at secondary school age are much more likely to continue playing as adults than those who start younger.

Meanwhile, my neighbour (at least he lives in the same road as me) Paul continued the great tradition of chess in our street by scoring a quick win against an experienced campaigner in only his second competitive game.

This has all happened because we’re promoting social chess and encouraging new members.