For our return match against Ealing, our opponents only had one of their stars in action, while Chris Russell made a first TVL appearance.

Mike Healey reports:

Another win! In an undefeated match. Who would have thought?

Thanks to all who played, especially our débutant Chris R.

Gavin and I both won from fairly terrible opening positions (except Gavin actually played well). Bertie continued his great form, playing a wonderful game. Raghu played a fairly mad game, which seemed to swing back and forth.

Chris R failed to quite outFrench his fellow French defender, while Martin, Chris W (and Richard J? [no! – see below]) all seemed to chop in slightly better positions with the overall match result in mind (even consulting their captain to do so!). Excellent teamwork!

	Ealing A		Richmond A
1	Alan Perkins 191	0:1	Gavin Wall 217
2	Mike Lamb 182	½:½	Chris Russell 214
3	Tony Wells 180	0:1	Mike Healey 213
4	Chris Greenshields	½:½	Martin Benjamin 185
5	Joao Santos 177	½:½	Chris White 175
6	Simon Healeas 157	0:1	Bertie Barlow 171
7	Mark Winterbotham 157	½:½	Richard James 167
8	Hristo Colov 155	0:1	Raghu Kamath 156
		2:6

Contrary to appearances, I was never much better in my game, having made serious errors of judgement on moves 9, 12, 15 and 18. When my opponent unexpectedly offered a draw I had only one move, which I probably wouldn’t have found, to stay in the game. The move I was intending would have left me in a hopelessly lost position. He explained that he’d lost his past four games and just wanted to draw to end his losing run. I, on the other hand, was more than happy to continue my drawing run (subject to my Wimbledon opponent getting back to me with a reply to my draw offer).

Good to see some 19th century romanticism on the lower boards:  I was on the black side of a Vienna with 3. f4 while Raghu successfully essayed a King’s Gambit.