Match Result
| Season | 11/12 |
| Date | Wed 18 Jan 2012 |
| Competition: | Middlesex League Division 2 |
| Fixture | West London '1' v Ealing 'B' |
| Result | L: 2.5-5.5 |
Scorecard
| Board | Grade | West London '1' | Ealing 'B' | Grade | |
| 1 | 176 | Bass, John W | Michael Lamb | ||
| 2 | 175 | Burke, John S | Mark Winterbotham | ||
| 3 | 173 | Campbell, Russell | Raj Jhooti | ||
| 4 | 172 | Jezierski, Colum | Simon Healeas | ||
| 5 | 170 | Kamath, Raghu | Alastair Johnstone | ||
| 6 | 168 | Bunn, Matthew | Dale Gibbons | ||
| 7 | 166 | Hayler, Andrew | John Harvey | ||
| 8 | 162 | Kane, Robert | Amr Khalil | ||
| Total |
Captains Comment
Simon Healeas reports: A trip to Chiswick to play West London’s first team was never going to be easy: The home team enjoyed an average 25 point grading advantage per board. This was going to be a tough one.
First to finish was our top board, Mike: a solid 22 move draw. It is always good to chalk up something early against a strong team and a real pleasure to see Mike back in action. Shortly afterwards my own game ended. I won a pawn in the opening but it came at the cost of ceding the initiative. However the soundness of the black pawn structure made it difficult for my opponent to make progress and a draw was agreed. At one-all I was beginning to feel a warm glow and rather foolishly started to think vaguely about a possible upset being on the cards. Dale brought me back to reality with a crunch. He went into the time scramble with 15 minutes on his clock in stark contrast to his young opponent’s 55 minutes – never a good sign. Unfortunately the knight and two connected passed pawns proved too strong for Dale’s rook. On another night this might well have been a draw.
In order to restore parity to the overall match score, Alastair played what he later described as “My kind of game.” On the white side of a Schliemann (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 f5), Black’s king had to move as early as the 9th move, mating threats appeared shortly afterwards and finally, White exchanged down to a winning endgame. The mighty c7-pawn ultimately deciding Black’s fate. This was a sparkling win by Alastair against strong opposition and truly a game to treasure.
With four boards remaining, the outcome of the match did not look promising. Raj had a difficult position to defend. Earlier in the game his opponent had doubled rooks on the e-file and kingside pressure. Having created a structural advantage in one part of the board, he then switched to pushing his passed a-pawn. As Dvoretsky has shown, defending two weaknesses is incredibly difficult and so it proved. In terms of fighting spirit nobody battles harder than Amr. Although he had a difficult position for much of the middlegame, he was constantly looking for resources to alleviate the pressure. Bob Kane, who is well-known on the chess circuit, finally broke through with two minutes remaining on his clock. John also had a difficult position although he did enjoy active piece play. Unfortunately he lost the game in the time scramble. The final game to end was Mark’s. In the late middlegame, he had a slight positional plus: the better knight, the doubled rooks on the d-file, the more active queen. However it was never quite winning, and the game concluded with him delivering a perpetual check.
The 5.5-2.5 defeat at Chiswick is a salutary reminder – as if we need one – of just how strong this Middlesex second division is. And finally, I’m grateful to Mark for stepping in at such short notice. When I picked him up he looked absolutely zonked out but it didn’t seem to affect his play. Thank you.