MW 13/14, Monday 20th April 2026

	Ealing B			Staines A
1 (b)	Jack Sheard	1866	0-1	Jon Barnes	1807
2 (w)	Simon Healeas	1838	1-0	Siddarth Ramaraju	1700
3 (b)	Matthew Georgiou	1827	1-0	David Bean	1680
4 (w)	Devina Bedi	1749	1-0	Lee Neate	1709
5 (b)	Hristo Colov	1755	1-0	Ye Kyaw	1660
6 (w)	Tony Braine	1731	0.5-0.5	Alex McTavish	1658
			4.5-1.5

The double over Staines was completed with the following assessments from the players in action:

Simon: “As White, a closed Catalan produced an equal middlegame. The slow improvement of my pieces combined with the opponent’s passive defence eventually translated into a difficult position for Black. Trying a piece sacrifice to relieve the pressure was quickly refuted, leading to his resignation.”

Tony: “I was white in a Sicilian. Black gained a slight edge in the opening but I soon developed some kingside threats. Under pressure black left a pawn hanging but I didn’t grab it, instinctively scared of a consequent rook infiltration to my second rank – a lazy choice as a few minutes calculation would’ve shown the pawn grab as very good for me. Later in the middle game again, I missed a further pretty simple chance to gain a pawn and a probably winning position. Finally in the endgame, I missed a clear win right at the end, at least now with the (partial) excuse I was short of time for calculating. So a litany of failures, the only consolation was that I never looked like losing.”

Hristo: “It was a relatively equal game until the 16th move, when he made a mistake and lost a pawn, and after that, another one. On 37th move, I had a Queen more (he had a choice to sacrifice his rock for the pawn, but for some reason he decided to give me an extra). Well, I thought he’d resign here but instead, he continued to play for another 25 minutes, and 12 minutes later, he resigned.”

With Devina and Matthew covering Jack’s loss, it looked like being a strong end to the season after all with our home form rectified.