Monday 9th December 2024, MW 4/14

	Surbiton B			Ealing B
1 (b)	Mateusz Dydak	2049	0.5-0.5	Xavier Cowan	1889
2 (w)	Seshagiri Vaddadi	1992	1-0	Mark Winterbotham	1854
3 (b)	Calum Kinloch	1865	0-1	Simon Healeas	1861
4 (w)	David J White	1795	1-0	Matthew Georgiou	1830
5 (b)	Leon Fincham	1748	1-0	Leslie Pringle	1603
6 (w)	JJ Padam	1676	1-0	Michael J Smith	1292
			4.5-1.5

Three away games and three defeats, but this was by far our best performance of the lot which gives me more hope going forwards. The 4.5-1.5 loss feels quite a harsh reflection of our efforts- we gave them very good games on all boards with each of us creating chances for a result. It wasn’t to be this time, but this level of team performance will yield some wins down the line if we sustain it.

My opponent had accidentally gone to our home ground instead, so I had 20 minutes of peaceful spectating on everybody’s first few moves. Two openings I had not seen in a long time were in action: a Kings Gambit against Matthew and later when my opponent turned up, a Budapest against me. Both openings have gone out of fashion at the top level of chess in recent years, and this has somewhat filtered down to the amateur level as well. Nonetheless, they are still very playable.

First blood went to Hounslow as they struck a fortunate blow on board 5. Leslie was having a really good game with the white pieces against Leon Fincham and looked certain to find a killer move with his dominant pawn structure, but unfortunately was not able to find the correct combination and succumbed to defeat.

Mark: “My game went ok in the opening; then a move I thought gave me a slight advantage didn’t (moving a knight attacking his bishop- missed he could ignore it and move his knight to d5 as he threatened to take my bishop on e7 with check). That gave him an advantage but he then played a move which gave me 3 different moves to near equalise, but I chose badly (f6). I thought it shored up the defence but actually it led to a nice series of moves that won him the exchange and game.”

I was very lucky to have faithful member Michael Smith step into the team at short notice. He defended resiliently against JJ Padam a pawn down for most of the game and had chances to equalise with some admittedly risky queen play, but ultimately he succumbed. A very good stand against the 400 rating point differential.

My game reached the following position, and at a first glance it seems I was dominating with that strong knight on f6. Surely it was only a matter of time before I found a breakthrough somewhere?

Nonetheless, things were much more complex than they initially seemed. The opposition queen perched on h4 was actually tying all my pieces down and being a right nuisance, preventing me from making any inroads. In the end, I chose a poor continuation (g5) and totally lost any positional advantage I had, in fact now handing my opponent the advantage. I then got fortunate that, due to us both becoming low on time with no increments, he didn’t fancy a ticking time bomb scramble and offered a draw that I simply had to accept with a greedy handshake.

Watching Simon play his signature Catalan as white over the last couple of seasons has given me a sense of calm and confidence about his game whoever he may be playing. In his own words: “As White against the Stonewall structure (pawns on c6,d5,e6,f5), very little happened for most of the game. However, I did manage to fix his queenside pawn majority; my kingside passed pawn paving the way to victory.”

Last to finish was Matthew who battled opposition captain David White and his Kings Gambit. I thought he initially did well to pacify white’s usual aggressive position, but unfortunately somewhere down the line his opponent escaped the bind and begun taking control. With no increments, time was shorter than usual and Matthew eventually went down under this pressure and his weaker position.

P.S. Apologies folks if any of my game renditions are not accurate, I’m still getting used to scanning the room more often as a playing captain.