Ealing B continued their winning ways with this victory over the Harrow C team.

First past the post was Devina in her debut appearance for the team., who wasted no time in despatching the opposition’s captain. Indeed so fast was her win that she had finished before Xavier, who was battling against rail chaos, had even arrived,.

Happily, Xavier made light of the time deficit to put another point on the board for the team, as he explains: “Starting 28 minutes down on the clock in an already short time control was not a good start. I needed to get the game moving quickly in the opening and attempt to gain an advantage in the middlegame. Things didn’t go that way however- I got an incredibly slow passive position against the Benko and was struggling for ideas. In the dying embers of my time on the clock, I managed to fashion some tactics taking advantage of a knight infiltration and a back rank weakness. With best play, it should’ve only won me a pawn leaving a fairly tricky endgame to navigate on the increment. My opponent nonetheless missed the back rank complications and was mated instead as he appeared distracted by my lack of time rather than the position. A bit of fortune I was grateful for to mask an otherwise weak performance.”

Simon, as Black. played the Petroff which he says “yielded a playable middlegame. Following much ponderous manoeuvring, I managed to win a pawn on move 29 but, shortly afterwards, lost it. Later, in a level position and Ealing already the match victor, my opponent offered a draw. With little risk of winning the game, I accepted. “

Matthew won a fine attacking game: “My opponent played the Pirc Defence, which gave me a chance to respond with the Austrian Attack, and have a bit of fun advancing all of my queen side pawns. This seemed to go well for me, with very little counter attacking happening against my king, it wasn’t that difficult to establish an advantage in the middle game which proved decisive by the time my pawns had broken through. I ended up winning his rook, then his queen and it wasn’t long after that he ran out of time in a lost position.”

The last time I played Surjit, I won in 13 moves. Mindful of that game, he played much more circumspectly this time around. Nonetheless, after 23 moves in a Spanish game, I had established what should have been a winning advantage: an extra pawn, two bishops and an open g-file to attack his king. However, at this point I played a horror move, blundering away a whole bishop without a trace of compensation and, although play continued for a further 25 moves, there was no way back.

The match win keeps our campaign on track, sitting equal with Hatch End B at the top of the table but with four matches in hand. Some of our remaining matches, in particular those against Greenford and Harrow Juniors A are likely to present sterner challenges than some of the recent match-ups.