There were mixed fortunes for our teams this week.

Our Thames Valley D team match at home to Harrow on Tuesday was won by default as our opponents were unable to raise a team.

At the Adelaide, our Ellery Williams Trophy team went down to Epsom.

Well done to Sampson for preventing a whitewash. Alex and Oscar gained some valuable experience against tough opposition on boards 3 and 4.

On Wednesday our Thames Valley A and C teams both travelled to Surbiton for matches against their A and C teams.

Surbiton A were much stronger than in their earlier matches, outrating us on every board, so our defeat, while disappointing, wasn’t surprising. There were some excellent individual performances, though.

Captain Maks reports:

Overall a surprisingly close match. 

We did well on our top two boards as well as our bottom board. Alastair on board one held an endgame with an IQP well. Chris baker equalized quite comfortably in the Dutch Defence and went on to outplay his opponent for a win. My own game on board 3 was a bit of a mixed bag. My opponent’s position was quite uncomfortable for most of it with bad light-square weakness but in the end it didn’t matter as it was decided by a silly blunder in time pressure. On board 4 Richard attempted a Benko Gambit out of the Modern Defence move order. An early e6 was tried in which his opponent got an edge and went on to win.

Boards 5 and 6 looked like mirror images of each other. Sampson playing against the Caro-Kann in the Advance Variation and Jon defending in the French Defence. Sampson lost a piece at some point and was much worse in an endgame whereas Jon Eckert managed to hold.

It was a different story for our C team, who, looking for a big win to increase their promotion chances outrated their opponents on every board. They weren’t disappointed.

What a great result! Well played everyone.

Here’s the current league table.

Our remaining matches:

Mon 16 Mar 26 Maidenhead C v Richmond C

Tue 17 Mar 26 Richmond C v Ealing C

Tue 21 Apr 26 Richmond C v Hounslow B (to be rearranged)

Two critical matches in two days later this month: a difficult away trip to Maidenhead, followed by a home encounter with our main rivals. We’ll need to win at least one of them as well as beating Hounslow to ensure promotion.