This week saw two away matches in the Middlesex League, with our first and third teams visiting King’s Head and Harrow respectively.
Our first team continues to struggle to field all our strongest players simultaneously, and unlike the home fixture between these teams just over two weeks earlier, King’s Head had a full-strength team, rated 2000+ across the board.
As such, the defeat was unsurprising, though Eric Eedle provided some very good news by playing an excellent game on Board 4 to defeat a strong opponent with the Black pieces, showing he is continuing to develop very nicely!
| Kings Head 1 | Kings Head 1 | Hendon 1 | Hendon 1 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | McMichael, Richard J | 2263 | ½ - ½ | Senior, Gary | 2195 | ||
| 2 | Black, Richard | 2160 | 1 - 0 | Robinson, James M | 1930 | ||
| 3 | Randall, Simon | 2073 | 1 - 0 | Bolchover, Anthony | 1854 | ||
| 4 | Fleming, Nigel | 2060 | 0 - 1 | Eedle, Eric F | 1834 | ||
| 5 | O'Shaughnessy, Conor | 2059 | 1 - 0 | Rogal, Chris S | 1803 | ||
| 6 | Mackenzie, Colin | 2024 | 1 - 0 | Napolitano, Domenico N | 1707 | ||
| 4½ - 1½ | |||||||
There was better news in the Division 3 encounter at Harrow. We started 1–0 down, as we had a last-minute withdrawal from the team due to a positive COVID test, and we were 3–0 down at the mid-way point, after suffering a couple of defeats on Boards 4 and 5.
However, Anthony and Lalit won their games on either side of me to put us in with a shout: if I could win my game, then we would tie the match. I had some advantage, going into the quickplay finish a pawn up in a rook ending.
While I wasn’t able to convert the position on the board, my opponent spent enough time trying to defend that he wasn’t able to survive on the clock, and his flag fell, rendering the level nature of the final position irrelevant. Thus, happily, we came away with half a match point!
| Harrow 2 | Harrow 2 | Hendon 3 | Hendon 3 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lyons, James | 1741 | 0 - 1 | Maganti, Lalit | ~1800 | ||
| 2 | Adam, Aslam | ~1800 | 0 - 1 | Medworth, Andrew | 1814 | ||
| 3 | Laddhad, Akshay | ~1800 | 0 - 1 | Kent, Anthony R | 1756 | ||
| 4 | Norzai, Ahmad | ~1700 | 1 - 0 | Kapur, Gul | 1491 | ||
| 5 | Dhemrait, Surjit S | 1649 | 1 - 0 | Artman, Tony | ~1200 | ||
| 6 | WALKOVER | 1 - 0 | DEFAULT | ||||
| 3 - 3 | |||||||
Many thanks to everyone who played in both these matches! The Harrow match clashed with our monthly FIDE Blitz event, run by Adam Raoof, so I’m especially grateful to everyone who agreed to make the trip to our northern neighbours rather than play the tournament closer to home.