A slightly disappointing week, with two narrow defeats and a win by default.

I’m not sure what happened to our Board 4 here: as you’ll see the default might have made a big difference to the result. Nevertheless, we did well to score 2½ points thanks to a win from Alex and three draws, notably from Laurie and George against much higher rated opponents. Well done to them.

We might have hoped for more in this match from last Tuesday, but Maidenhead fielded a pretty strong team.

I noticed that Gavin had lost within under an hour against the always dangerous Andrew Smith, but I left at 8:30 so didn’t see what happened in the other games. It’s good to see Bertie back on the winning trail.

Captain Maks reports:

On paper, we were the favourites to win this match-up against Maidenhead as we were between 40 and 140 points higher rated on many boards. Initially Raghu was also going to play on board 4 leaving myself to play on board 5 making the board 4 and 5 matchups very level, but we decided to switch at the last minute which Maidenhead kindly accepted. 

As we lost the match, notably a few upsets happened on our side. Gavin lost quite quickly after a straight out blunder, which he saw immediately after he played it. Alastair on board 3 also lost. I wasn’t sure what opening it was but it resembled a Benoni structure for Alastair apart from his opponent had a clear edge mid-game with strong pressure around Alastair’s Kingside and center. 

Maidenhead also employed a very strong junior on board two, in which Mike, playing white, wasn’t able to crack his defences. It ended in a opposite colour bishop ending but with queens. Initially it looked as if Mike could perhaps work his magic and eke out a win despite the drawish tendency of the position. The Junior initially offered a draw, which was declined, but things switched round slightly and Mike offered a draw which this time accepted. 

So it was a bit of an unfortunate showing from our top 3 boards.  From our bottom 3 boards the best result was Bertie’s game on board 6. I didn’t have a chance to look around but Mike informs me Bertie played very well. I also picked up a copy of Bertie’s opponents scoresheet after the game. It was hard to decipher, but it looks like a well played Italian Game where Bertie got in c3, then d4-d5 and an eventual pawn break on c5. Bertie then proceeded to outplay his opponent on the queenside. 

On board 5 Raghu offered a draw in an equal position and got a draw. In my own game on board 4, I was perhaps playing a little too slowly, but had a very dominant position against a Benoni-type position. It led to an eventual win of the exchange but then my time got very low. With a 20 minute lead vs my 1 minute of clock time my opponent strategically offered a draw in a sharp position. Frankly I got a bit distracted from both considering this, not having time to check the other unfinished game (which was Mike’s on board 2) and also there was a bit of post game muttering going on, making it hard for me to calculate. My time slipped down to 6 seconds then rather then playing on with the 10 second increment I decided to accept the draw.

So overall I would say this match was a bit of a mishap to our chances of trying to come second in the league. It being a home match should have statistically favoured us but the chances went the other way on the night.  A good game from Bertie and a solid hold from Raghu considering he had the black pieces. 

Thanks to those who played. A bit unfortunate that Maxim who was going to play board 3 got tied up with work duties.

There was further disappointment for our Fred Manning Trophy team, when Wimbledon B, not for the first time this season, failed to turn up, in this case without giving us any notice. At least our players were able to play ladder games instead. This bloodless victory leaves us in 3rd place in a closely contested division.