Our Thames Valley League E team, playing in Division X, opened their season with a narrow defeat against Ealing D.

Division X is a friendly, non-competitive division, where the spirit of the match is more important than the result. Well done to Barry and Dan for their contributions to the score.

The following evening’s match was a more serious outing for our TVA team, at home to Surbiton A (we seem to have played a lot of matches against Surbiton already this season!). The two teams seemed fairly evenly matches, but we scored a 4-2 victory. Welcome to Ashley, playing his first TVL match for us, who will be a very useful addition to our squad.

Maks reports:

A 4-2 win by us, meaning we got off to a good start. Raghu outplayed his opponent in a closed Sicilian. Maks and Maxim were engaged in some topical opening theory battles; an interesting move order difference in an open Sicilian by Maxim gaining an edge whereas Maks’s position was at least quite double-edge playing a gambit as black in an anti-Benoni opening line. Unfortunately, Maks lost after miscalculating and losing a few tempi but Maxim got a draw, after putting his opponent on the back foot for a while. The other games I didn’t have much time to look at, however, they mostly looked fairly balanced near the start. John ended his game in a rook ending two pawns up. Ashley in his debut on the team managed to get an excellent win, and Gavin drew.

Many thanks to those who played yesterday. Congratulations to Ashley, John, and Raghu for their wins.