This week our Thames Valley A and B teams both had important matches which we needed to win to improve both teams’ chances of avoiding relegation. You’ll want to know how they went.

On Tuesday our A team entertained Maidenhead A at the Adelaide. Earlier in the season we’d lost 6-0 in a match where they were at full strength but we only had one A team player available.

Maidenhead don’t always travel well, and this time they only had one of their A team players in their team. We were expecting a big victory, but our opponents put up a stern resistance and, until the last 20 minutes, the match looked close.

Here’s what happened.

Captain Maks reports:

We enjoyed a 100 to 250 rating point advantage across all boards and it certainly showed with the result of a  5-1 victory. Some of the games were a lot tighter than the result suggests.

Chris Baker apparently missed a win of a piece after entering a sacrificial line that petered out to a dead position, where as in my own game on board 6 I was down a queen for rook and knight plus 1 passed pawn and was much worse. Somehow, I managed to coordinate eventually to an equal but tricky position where my opponent blundered his queen for my Rook and pawn. I didn’t see any of the games on board 1 and 2 as I was trying to capitalise on my own opponent’s low time. I briefly saw Raghu’s game, where he was comfortably much better in an open position, with the option of shattering his opponent’s kingside as well as Alastair’s game where it looked more double-edged in a double queen-side castling game, that was fairly closed but with Alastair having a slightly uncomfortable double pawn near his king on the queenside.

Anyway, well done to the team. It puts us out of joint bottom and into the middle of the league table!

Here’s the top board game, with notes from Mike. As always, click on any move for a pop-up window and you can play it through.

Here’s the current league table.

On Thursday our B team visited Staines A. The teams were very closely matched on paper, but we managed to come away with a narrow victory.

The league situation now looks like this:

Thanks to all for playing in this week’s matches, and congratulations to the winners!