It was a tough week for us, with two heavy defeats, a narrow defeat and a drawn match to report.

Our resources were stretched on Monday 6 March, with three Thames Valley League away matches on the same evening. Nevertheless, our B team did remarkably well to run Ealing A close. It’s not a good idea to have matches for adjacent teams on the same day, but sometimes there’s no choice.

Here’s our A team match against the formidable Kingston A. Unfortunately, our intended board 2 was taken ill while on his way to the match, so was unable to get there.

1. David Maycock (2358) 0:1 Gavin Wall (2281)
2. Peter Lalic (2322) 1:0 Default
3. Vladimir Li (2194) 1:0 Maks Gajowniczek (1821)
4. Will Taylor (2039) 1:0 Jon Eckert (1854)
5. David Rowson (2054) 1:0 Raghu Kamath (1833)
6. Alan Scrimgour (2013) 1:0 Adrian Waldock (1705)

Congratulations to Gavin, who beat a member of his London League team, and thanks to all for playing, especially Adrian for turning out at short notice.

Our B team performed well against Ealing A, with great results on the top four boards.

1. Andrew Harley (2179) ½:½ Bertie Barlow (1899)
2. Chris Greenshields (2009) 0:1 Sampson Low (1828)
3. Jonathan White (1946) ½:½ Pablo Soriano (1775)
4. Simon Healeas (1878) ½:½ Simon Illsley (1786)
5. Hristo Colov (1806) 1:0 George Milligan (1552)
6. Jason Obihara (1776) 1:0 Nikhil Theva Raj (-)

Again, thanks to all for playing, well played everyone, especially Sampson, who played a captain’s innings, and welcome to Nik on his first appearance for Richmond.

Our D team were unable to raise a full team to visit Staines, and lost heavily against strong opposition.

1. Derek McGovern (1805) ½:½ Barry Sutton (1620)
2. Ye Kyaw (1673) 1:0 George Dokic (1376)
3. Paul Seymour (1663) 1:0 Laurie Catling (1359)
4. Colin Aniecko (-) 1:0 Julian Bedale (1128)
5. Steve Payne (1586) 1:0 Ken Broadley (1038)
6. David Bean (1688) 1:0 Default

Well done Barry, and thanks to all.

There was better news on Tuesday 7 March, where our Ellery Williams Trophy (rapidplay) team drew their match against South Norwood. This time Steve was playing for, rather than against us!

1. Steve Payne (1569s) 0:1 Paul Dupré (1827)
2. Christos Venetis (-) 1:0 Ken Chamberlain (1543)
3. Peter Kasprowicz (-) 0:1 Ibrahim Abouchakra (1475)
4. Ron Bilkhu (1404s) 1:0 Les Denford (1270)

Congratulations to Christos and Ron on their wins.

You’ll notice that the same players have different ratings in different leagues and different divisions. One reason is that the leagues use different software which take different approaches to accessing ECF ratings: another reason is that rapidplay leagues use different ratings to standardplay leagues. Don’t ask!

Thanks again to all players and, most of all, to the match captains.