In both our matches this week we came very close to achieving important victories, but it wasn’t to be.

Our TVB team faced a difficult assignment at home to Division 2 leaders Wimbledon A, who outrated us by about 100 points on every board. We received an unexpected point at the start, though, when their Board 6 failed to turn up: his email wasn’t working so hadn’t received the message.

There was also a brilliant win for Michael against his very experienced Welsh senior international opponent along with a solid draw from Sampson.

Victor and I both came close to drawing, but not close enough. Matt, though, was winning his game, but the position wasn’t easy to play and his resourceful opponent managed to wriggle out and score the full point in a very similar bishops of opposite colours ending to that on Board 1. He’s threatened to send me the game: if he does I may add the critical position here.

On Wednesday our Ellam Trophy (Surrey Division 3) team visited Chessington A, hoping to retain their 100% record against their 3rd placed opponents.

Captain Alastair reports:

We had a strange match at Chessington which started by us finding out that they had been ejected from the function room and we had to play in one end of the bar area. Ear plugs were provided but it was noisy nevertheless. 

I decided that we should continue with the match anyway as we knew that their top player (actually a “ringer” – Peter Lalic from Kingston) was unavailable due to a match clash.  We outrated them on every board except board 2, and by over 100 points on most boards, so the prospects looked good. However, it did not go as planned. 

The strangeness continued when Chris Briscoe, on their board 1, responded h5 after Mike’s e4 opener!

Eventually our superior experience on the bottom three boards won out with a nice exchange sacrifice from Maks into a winning Knight and two pawns endgame against a rook. Sampson was actually dead lost but managed to swindle his opponent for a win. 

James won and Mike and Chris both went down to their strong opponents leaving me to win the match for us. 

I had played poorly in the opening but my opponent had not capitalised on it and I got the upper hand on his loose dark squares as can be the case in the Kings Indian. I burned a lot of time and by the time this position was reached, we both had less than 5 minutes left. 

This position should be trivial to win as a simple Be5 is totally crushing. If White exchanges queens, he is then forced to play Rh1 to prevent mate and after Rxa2 by black the a-pawn will queen. If White tries to keep the queens on the board with Rg1, I have a nice choice between Rh2+ or the even better, Qxf3!! with mate in a few moves. 

I saw some of this, but also that I could force Queen exchange by threatening Qe6+  so I played Qe5 thinking he would have to exchange immediately, totally overlooking White’s response – f4! Now Qe6+ is met by f5. The shock of this move meant I took my time below 1 minute before playing Qe8. White then follows up with Rg1 where amazingly Black is still winning but you have to find the right line. I didn’t find it in time and played Rd2 which is catastrophically bad and fatal. 

The right line line is Qd7+ where f5 is forced and then you play g5 in response to keep the file closed. If hxg5, Be5 wins due to the attack on the Queen and mate threats. Any other move by White, g4+ is coming and White King is squeezed out of existence.

So, a 3-3 draw, leaving Coulsdon as clear leaders in the league with one match to play…against us! That match will be the decider with us needing a win and them just needing a draw. All eyes on the finale!