Our first Surrey match of 2020 saw us entertaining a strong Epsom team in the Centenary Trophy.

Huw Williams reports:

Epsom visited us on the 16th and their top board had a rating of 202, so Eamon was up against it straight away. However after three games we were 2-1 up! I was my usual two pawns down, but my opponent missed a knight fork that won a rook and 12 moves later won the game for me. Next to me, Andreas played a very sharp line that saw both kings edging towards the middle of the board. His opponent’s king was trapped and a bishop check won the game as the queen was about to fall.

Eamon’s game was very interesting and ended up R+R v R+B with pawns, which unfortunately Eamon lost, but went down fighting.

Masoud as always battled away against Marcus (who had a 40+ grading point advantage), but found himself a couple of pieces down. Rob tried the Smith-Morra Gambit (watching too many Adam/Huw games) and lost, which left Paul. His game went up to the cut-off point at which his opponent pushed his connected pawns and the game was adjourned. There was no way in stopping them, so the result ended 4-2 to Epsom.

Very proud of the team. Thank you.

	Richmond		Epsom 1
1	Eamon Rashid-Farokhi 144	0:1	Peter Large –
2	Masoud Molazadeh 126	0:1	Marcus Gosling 164
3	Rob Hunter –	0:1	Graham Alcock 148
4	Paul Evans –	0:1	Ravi Sharma 134
5	Andreas Maroulis –	1:0	Venkatesh Subramoniam 132
6	Huw Williams 97	1:0	Haris Nisic 117
		2:4

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Epsom are a new club, or rather the reincarnation of an old club, re-formed and masterminded by former RJCC member Marcus Gosling (my connections with his family go back nearly 50 years, to 1972). Their success, going so far as to attract an IM, Peter Large, who has been inactive for the past decade, shows what can by achieved with young, proactive and dynamic organizers.

We wish them all the best for the future: with any luck we’ll be playing their second team rather than their first team next season.