Ealing B belatedly started their Hillingdon League season with yet another trip to Harrow. The final score line disguises some closely contested games, despite our significant rating advantage on all boards.

Jason was first to finish, continuing his fine form. Playing his preferred opening with the white pieces, Jason won a pawn and comprised his opponent’s pawn structure to smoothly convert a rook and pawn endgame.

Simon followed up with a draw, agreed after 25 moves of an “uneventful Panov Caro Kann.”

In his own words: Tony defended as black against the English gaining an initiative. He looked for a way to exploit this but failed. It was there- but only if you were a computer or comfortable calculating ten moves deep!

The game then became even, maybe slightly favouring white who then swapped queens heading to a dead drawn endgame. However white then immediately blundered, dropping a pawn and black easily won.

My own game was a horror show. After playing too passively in the opening, I allowed Black to build up a dangerous attack on my king. I survived at the cost of a pawn and then managed to build pressure of my own with some active central play. However, I failed to find the right way to make further progress and entered a level endgame of QB and Ps. I then erred again when I swapped queens, when an intermediate bishop check would have left me a piece up..

I was now worse but fought back to reach a winning position with my pawn due to queen first. It seemed that I was finally going to prevail in this topsy-turvy game but, with the finishing line in sight (one more accurate move) l unaccountably made a final, fatal, egregious blunder, advancing my pawn rather than the supporting king, gifting the win to Black. Very painful!

At this stage then, the match was still not won. Fortunately, we had a solid advantage on board one. As Xavier reports: “After an early exchange flurry, I managed to gain entry to his 7th rank via my rooks and should’ve made things simpler by taking his central pawn, but instead I took a wide pawn and allowed his central pawn to cause havoc in my position. Thankfully I was able to steady the ship under time pressure and win the game with my extra 3 pawns, but I have to admit I made things very difficult indeed when it needn’t have been.”

So, a comfortable winning margin in the end, to kick off the campaign. Next up, Hatch End B on December 18th.