Ealing B fell to an embarrassing loss against the juniors of Hatch End.

It didn’t help that, due to a misunderstanding, we started the game short of our top board.

Matters did not improve at the board where I unfurled one of my speciality blunders dropping a whole rook without a trace of compensation. Predictably, I didn’t recover from there and conceded when my opponent found a cute combination to terminate my resistance.

A quick survey of the remaining boards gave scant cause for optimism. Simon looked dead and buried for all money; Alex looked to be mired in complications; only Tony seemed to have an edge.

Rather than hang around for several hours I headed for home. Later in the evening. I was amazed to hear that Simon had won! Simon explains how this came about:

“As White, my young opponent played the Two Knights variation against the Petroff (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nc3).  During the opening I made a sloppy knight move (12…Nd7?) which was then compounded by a poor rook move (13…Rb8?), the outshot of which was the near trapping of my queen. To save the queen, a knight was given up resulting in a strategically lost position. Fortunately for me, my 12-year old opponent struggled to find a winning plan. He blundered his extra piece and subsequently allowed me to swap off into a winning king and pawn ending. Without doubt, this was an incredibly lucky let-off, as I was lost for a large part of the game.”

The ever-reliable Tony also landed a win. As he writes: “Playing black, the opening went well as I managed to saddle white with an isolated d pawn on a semi open file. This eventually fell.
It swapped down to KQ B + 6P vs K Q N + 5P. I had a c2.0 advantage but still a lot to do to convert it. However, I then managed to swindle white out of his knight by making an objectively inferior move, as I sensed he hadn’t seen the coming trap. After that the win was straightforward.”

Unfortunately, we couldn’t complete the recovery as Alex fell to defeat on board three leaving the hosts victors on the night.