MW 8/14, Monday 2nd February 2026
| Ealing B | Maidenhead B | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 (b) | Alejandro Lopez-Martinez | 1927 | 1-0 | Nigel Smith | 1877 |
| 2 (w) | Xavier Cowan | 1906 | 1-0 | John Snead | 1769 |
| 3 (b) | Simon Healeas | 1867 | 1-0 | George Birch | 1732 |
| 4 (w) | Jack Sheard | 1850 | 0.5-0.5 | Andrew Boughen | 1822 |
| 5 (b) | Mark Winterbotham | 1825 | 0.5-0.5 | Paul McCauley | 1511 |
| 6 (w) | Matthew Georgiou | 1821 | 0.-1 | Dominic Tang | 1016 |
| 4-2 |
Simon: “As Black in a Chigorin, I soon found myself defending a difficult position. In a kingside attack, my opponent gave up a knight for just a pawn but gained a huge positional advantage in return. For much of the game, I had to hang on, respond to threats, and hope to get into an ending when the extra piece would count for something. This finally happened but not without some scary moments along the way.”
Mark: “Not much happened in my game. Took my usual early draw (he was slightly up) I’m afraid and left it to you guys.”
Alejandro helped himself to yet another win in the following game:
Matthew: “My game was best forgotten, at least from a rating perspective. I played an Italian opening and he tried an unusual early g6 line, which I should have countered with an earlier d4 to open the centre. I did play d4 a few moves later and opened things up, but by then it was looking less good for me and I tried a speculative exchange sacrifice. The computer said it wasn’t as bad as I thought it had turned out to be, but I didn’t play very accurately after that and he made the extra material count. He played a good game and defended well.”
With Jack’s draw and my rather unusual 6th rank rook checkmate, it completed our first home win and pushed us up higher still in the table.