This is a new feature, showcasing games played by our members during the 2024-25 season.

We start with a contribution from John Burke, who has submitted the game he played in our recent London League match against Mushrooms. The match result didn’t go in our favour, and John was the only member of our team to win his game, which he did by means of a double exchange sacrifice.

Here’s the game, with annotations by Stockfish 17. Click on any move for a pop-up window.

As Stockfish says, an excellent game. After 12 moves White had completed his development and established a knight on an outpost near the black king, while Black had played eight pawn moves and his queen side was totally undeveloped. But Stockfish is of the opinion that Black has very close to a winning advantage. It looked for a moment as if Nick had mating chances on the long diagonal but John skilfully avoided all the traps. Chess isn’t an easy game.

You’ll notice John’s exchange sacrifices on moves 15 and 18.

If you’ve played any interesting games this season, and they don’t have to be in Richmond matches, please feel free to submit them for publication here. You can annotate them yourself if you wish, or leave me to run them through Stockfish.