Bd	Ealing B	Gd		Harrow Juniors A	Gd
1	Xavier Cowan	1888	½-½	Arthur Cann	1766
2	Simon Healeas	1833	½-½	Darsh Sanosh Kumar	1445
3	Matthew Georgiou	1837	1-0	Niranjan Ramesh	1276
4	Tony Braine	1678	1-0	Ashley K Anderson	1003
5	Alastair Johnstone	1610	1-0	Kiiaan Agarwal	912
			4-1

Back in league action, Ealing B enjoyed a relatively comfortable evening against a below-strength Harrow Juniors team.

I found myself playing young Kiiaan for the third time in little over a month. He was less generous than in our last encounter but, in truth, not by a lot. It is indicative of how such mismatches can effect your concentration that I somehow managed to miss mate in one on move 35 resulting in the game continuing until mate was finally delivered on move 52!

Tony also had little difficulty in bringing home the full point in his game but, on the other boards, our players were made to work somewhat harder.

Matthew eventually managed to break down his opponent’s resistance but both Simon and Xavier were made to fight to the end to secure draws. Simon was actually a pawn down in his game and had to play with great accuracy to find the path to a draw.

Xavier, as ever living off fumes, was also a pawn down – a gambit from his Benko opening – and had to find a sequence of only moves to survive, defending impressively with B+N against R+Ps. When white’s clock also ran down to increments and with Xavier’s pieces optimally placed, a draw was offered and duly accepted.