Ealing B shared the spoils with Greenford A in this evenly-contested match.

Simon was first to finish after not having one of his better nights. As Simon succinctly puts it: “Leon played his standard opening as Black (g6, Bg7, d6,c6) and understood the subsequent middlegame much better than me. Definitely a game to try and forget.”

Xavier had more success: “We played a version of the Nimzo Indian where my opponent, playing black, goes for e5 instead of c5 as the usual pawn placement. This gave the game more of a King’s Pawn opening feel than my Queen’s Pawn standard, so I decided to change tack and play more aggressively. The result was a really exciting game where we castled opposite sides and went at each other. His queen became trapped whilst attacking, although it remained dangerous: mine then entered his king’s zone with a lot more freedom. At this point he had an absurd time advantage, 1 hour 6 mins to my 15 seconds (move 20 ish). He decided then to use this time advantage to no effect whatsoever, blundering a mate in two. He couldn’t believe it and I was almost disappointed since I had a very intriguing follow up planned for the singular correct defensive move he should’ve played. The post mortem analysis nonetheless revealed enormous complexity in the position that I hadn’t foreseen – perhaps I should be thankful for the blunder after all.”

Matthew as black confronted the Scotch: 1.e4 e5, 2.Nf3 Nc6, 3.d4 exd4, 4.Nxd4 Bc5, 5.Be3 Qf6, 6.c3 Nge7.  “I was expecting 7.Bc4, but he put the bishop on e2 instead and, after castling, I was able to break in the centre with d5 This gave me a slight edge and I felt like I had slightly better chances in the middle game that followed (confirmed by my engine after the game) but the edge eventually evaporated and we agreed a draw after 25 moves or so, in what looked like a fairly even endgame in which we both had a Knight, Rook and symmetrical pawn structure. All in all not a very noteworthy game!”

In my own game, I faced a French Defence, playing a truly appalling eighth move which should have had dire consequences for me but, fortunately, Black made a recapture with the wrong knight a few moves later allowing me to regain equality. Shortly after, I missed an opportunity to close out the game early.

Here, Black blundered with 16…Nb4?? which is of course met by Bh7+ 17.Qxd8 Nxc2 18.Qd3+ Qf5. At this point, I failed to find the trivial winning move 19.Re4! threatening a quick mate or, at worst, winning the Nc2. I then had to grind out an endgame win in 53 moves in the course of which I offered Black the chance to restore full equality.

This win put Ealing 2½-1½ ahead but Greenford squared the match with a win in the final game to finish. Playing black in a Dutch, Tony had gained a mild initiative after ten moves but was already twenty minutes down on the clock. He continued to press but spent too long looking for a non-existent killer blow. White defended well and, under time pressure, Tony blundered a pawn. Perhaps the endgame could have been held, but Tony had to concede when his flag dropped.