Ealing B ultimately prevailed after a much tighter encounter than anticipated.

I have long since learnt to take little notice of the official rating of juniors and my 1156-rated opponent in this match fully justified my scepticism, playing a move-perfect Caro-Kann for a dozen moves or more. After admittedly missing an opportunity on move 21, I eventually ground out a win in 54 moves, but I had to be on my toes throughout!

Emerging from my cocoon to look at the other games, I took one look at Xavier’s click time and realised he was in trouble. As Xavier reports:” I got a fairly decent position out of the opening, perhaps not playing the most accurate moves, then thought for nearly 40 minutes about several long tactical lines. Satisfied with all the analysis, I played my move that I thought created a lot of problems with his piece development. When I came back to the board, I realised it blundered a piece to a queen fork pretty much instantly. And just like that, the position was totally lost- there was no route for feasible counterplay anywhere. I tried but lost even more material and had to resign. Very poor. You cannot give these tricky youngsters any rope to work with.”

Fortunately Simon had, by this time, established a clear material and positional advantage in his game and he duly converted his advantage. As Simon reports: “I opened with d4 to which my young opponent responded with an aggressive version of the Tarrasch. This did not work out well for him as by move 15 he had lost the exchange, had a knight on a8, and his king exposed in the centre. He then put up stiff resistance but eventually succumbed on move 47 with the imminent prospect of losing a bishop in the endgame. “

Tony’s game was a real roller-coaster that ended in tragedy. In Tony’s own words: “I played black in the Albin counter-gambit for the first time in three years. A mistake, as I forgot the continuation on move four which would have led to an immediate win and instead found myself a piece down. I had some counter-play for the piece and fought back to a winning endgame, seven points up by the computer. But I was on increments now and blundered my queen. The end.”

So, with the match dramatically squared, all attention passed to the board two match where Ali, in his debut appearance for the team, had won an exchange plus over his opponent. However, the opponent’s N+R proved to be a good match for Ali’s two rooks.

Ali is to be much commended for his cool play in the endgame, when he was consistently under time pressure, essentially living on increments. His watching team-mates watched anxiously as the game approached its conclusion. Happily, Ali prevailed, negotiating his way through a myriad of dangers before finally launching his h-pawn to a conclusive coronation.

All credit to Uxbridge for their tenacity., We will need to keep on our toes to stay ahead in the matches ahead.