Last Monday evening we played our first home match of the 22 – 23 season against Uxbridge Juniors A in Hillingdon Division 3. We haven’t played them before and they had two ungraded new players who proved surprisingly strong. We drew the match 2-2 with both Alex and Michael winning as white on boards 1 and 3. Geoff and Leo, playing black on boards 2 and 4 lost their games to the two new Uxbridge juniors.

On board 1 Alex wrote ‘I played the Vienna Gambit with the white pieces. My opponent didn’t know the theory and immediately gave me huge advantage.  I made a temporary sacrifice on f7 leaving his king vulnerable. I immediately regained my piece and was able to develop all my pieces for a final attack. He resigned on move 23 in a hopeless position with all his pieces tied up and undeveloped.’

Geoff played black on board 2 against a king’s pawn opening. He blundered early on, playing an inaccurate move in the opening that cost him a bishop for a pawn, and from thereon he was struggling. He soldiered on for a further twenty- three moves but eventually had to concede defeat and resigned.

On board 3 Michael played white. Black played the Scandinavian defence to white’s king pawn opening, bringing out his queen early. Both players castled queenside and then white pushed his central pawns. On move 27 black allowed white to get a fine outpost for his knight on d6 with check and supported by pawns and rook control of the d file. The knight captured a black pawn creating two passed pawns for white. White queened one and could have queened a second. White then had to guard against stalemating the black king, but avoided this and black resigned, a queen and rook down. A pgn is attached.

Leo played black on board 4, facing a queen’s pawn opening. Initially he was in a good position with pieces developing well, but then made a bad move and lost a bishop. He pushed a pawn to the seventh rank but without support white was soon able to take it. Leo resigned soon after three pieces down.

A creditable result for our first match but hopefully we can do better in our next match against Uxbridge Juniors B.

David Housego, Hillingdon C team captain.