With the season reaching its climax, we had a busy, and, for the most part, highly successful week.
Our TVB team visited Maidenhead B, and were pleased to see that, due to a clash with a Berkshire League match, they were below full strength.
Captain Alastair reports: With us heavily outrating Maidenhead B on the first 4 boards, a win seemed likely and indeed proved to be so. Simon, aka “The Kingslayer”, again beat his higher rated opponent with a neat combination involving forcing the King into a fatal discovered-check situation. Meanwhile, Richard valiantly agreed to play despite suffering from a nasty cold, which was just as well as he was our only reserve with Pablo on loan to the Ellery Williams team (where he helped them retain the Trophy). Despite achieving a strong position, time pressure was too much and Richard had to settle for a draw. Sampson sacked a Bishop for a winning kingside attack cementing our victory. Solid draws by Bertie and Adrian resulted in the final 4.5-1.5 score to us.
It really should have been 5-1: with not a lot of time left I traded queens into an ending which, although I was a pawn up, was tricky to play. A simple queen check, which I’d have seen if I’d thought for a few seconds, would have forced immediate resignation.
Here’s the current league table: it will be close between Surbiton B and ourselves for second place behind Kingston B.
Meanwhile, our Ellery Williams Trophy team visited Wimbledon, needing a win to secure the trophy. Undaunted by facing higher rated opponents as a result of the fixture clash, they pulled off an excellent victory.
Captain George reports:
Despite being outrated by a total of 550 points across the 4 boards Richmond overcame a strong Wimbledon team 2.5-1.5 to retain the coveted rapid play title in the final must win match. Heroic wins from Pablo and Peter and a draw from Mike sealed the trophy on the night. Huge congratulations to Victor, Harry, Peter, Sampson, Adrian, Tom, Pablo and Mike who all contributed to the Ellery Williams team throughout the season!
Here’s the final league table. Congratulations to George for his great captaincy.
Our TVC team the following evening were unable to match this success, going down to Hounslow B. They will be much happier back in Division 3 next season!
There were solid draws on the top three boards, where Peter, Barry and George faced higher rated opponents, but our lower boards were outclassed on the night.
Our last match of the week featured another trip to Wimbledon, this time for our TVA team, who were hoping for a win to boost their chances of second place. Here’s what happened.
There were good wins for our top three boards against lower rated opponents, while it’s also great to see Bertie back on the winning trail. Well done everyone.
Captain Maks reports:
Our Wimbledon away game from a few week back was perhaps one of the most smooth sailing matches we had so far.
In the majority of the games, none of our players was in any trouble. There was one mistake in Sampson’s game on Board 5 which turned a dead level pawn endgame into a loss. I will show it here.
Sampson played b4 in time pressure, and after ..g4 automatically played hxg4?? . After ..hxg4, Sampson was in zugwang once, forcing Kf2 Ke4, Ke2 and then of course the reserve tempo on ..a6! was used to outflank Sampson’s king and gobble up the pawns. If instead of hxg4, h5! was played then it is instead Sampson’s opponents move, and Sampson cannot be double zugwang’ed in the same manner.
Another slight mishap was perhaps my own game, in the decision not to play on after a draw offer. It came out of an ‘obsure variation’ of the Benko Gambit.
Absolute best here is ..a5, bxa5 Nxa5, Qxb6 Rfb8, Qa3 and now ..Nb2!, Qxa8 Rxa8, Rxa8 Ne1.
Black could have also played something like ..Qb6 for a smaller advantage.
So apart from this draw on board 4 and loss on board 5 we had 4 straight wins. Most impressive was probably Gavin on board 1 who was delayed by travel to get to the game but managed to finish the earliest.
The other three games are all available here.