Three results to report from Tuesday 11 October.
The return match between our Thames Valley A and B teams resulted in another win for the A team, this time by 4½ points to 1½.
- Jon Eckert (1895) 0:1 Gavin Wall (2311)
- Ieuan Fenton (1951) 0:1 Mike Healey (2250)
- Andrii Boiechko (-) 0:1 Maxim Dunn (1909)
- Sampson Low (1827) 1:0 Bertie Barlow (1940)
- Simon Illsley (1786) ½:½ Raghu Kamath (1865)
- Pablo Soriano (1790) 0:1 Maks Gajowniczek (1800)
Congratulations to Simon, a Richmond Junior Club member back in the 1980s, on a draw in his first TVL game for Richmond.
Maks has kindly volunteered to take over the TVA captaincy from me, and will be in charge of the team for our next match (away to Ealing A on Mon 31 October).
Our Thames Valley E team, in Division X, a four-board ‘friendly’ league, opened their campaign with a visit to Surbiton D, who fielded a strong team outgrading us heavily on every board.
- Barry Sutton (1598) ½:½ Alexey Markov (1703)
- George Dokic (1374) 0:1 Oleksiy Podolyan (1613)
- Jim Anandajeyarajah (1226) 0:1 Phil Goodings (1488)
- Seb Johnson (-) 1:0 David Morant (1469)
A commendably close result, with a great first win for Seb against a very experienced opponent and an excellent draw for Barry.
Something strange happened in our Ellery Williams Trophy match at Ashtead. Over the board, we lost the match 3-1, like this. Not surprisingly, as we were facing a much stronger team.
- Jack Buckley (1713) 1:0 Otto Weidner (1684)
- Robert Jurjevic (1649) 1:0 Steve Payne (1510)
- Hugh Wylie (1497) 0:1 Mike Robinson-Chui (1442)
- Christopher Perks (1671) 1:0 Ron Bilkhu (1404)
However, the Surrey League have strict board order rules relating to ratings, along with stringent penalties for clubs who break them. It transpired that their board 4 played out of order (apparently their captain got confused between standardplay and rapidplay ratings), which meant that Ron’s game was scored as a win for us. In addition, Ashtead were penalised a point for the regulation breach, so we were fortunate to be awarded a 2-1 win.
It was a tough week for three of our teams, facing higher rated opponents, but they all performed creditably in the circumstances.
Thanks to all who played. If you’d like to be considered for a team in one of our leagues in future, please get in touch with Sampson, or directly with the match captain of the team you’d like to play for. Contact details are on our fixtures page.