On 13 January we welcomed a depleted Muswell Hill side to the Actonians (they defaulted on two boards). Nevertheless, Muswell Hill is always a tough team to play and so it proved. In my absence, Matthew Georgiou kindly stepped in as acting captain.
On board two, Martin secured our only win of the evening. He writes: “I was White in a c3 Sicilian and built up a strong position controlling the centre. I tried to break through with an exchange sacrifice that didn’t work, and found myself an exchange and pawn down with no more than some active pieces as compensation. Black pressed and blundered the exchange back again, at which point my active pieces were enough to convert to a win.”
As for the other games, they all went in Muswell Hill’s favour. On board one, Alan notes: “I was Black and played the King’s Indian. My opponent played a modern, trendy line with 5.Be2 O-O 6.Be3. Unfamiliar with this I misplayed the opening and after White’s tenth move, which has been played by the ultra-strong computer AlphaZero, I realised I was in trouble. I had to choose between several alternatives, all of which left me a pawn down. Instead of trying to defend I played speculatively and even sacrificed a piece. He failed to find the refutation but I ran short of time and blundered away more material. My engine demonstrates that near the end I had a line which is almost equal.”
Nor did John have an easy game. He comments: “I was on the Black side of an English Opening. After reaching an equal position I chose a poor plan, making a couple of tactical oversights and a couple of poor moves, leaving White with a clear advantage. My attempt to overturn this with a temporary piece sacrifice failed and I lost material before blundering away a piece. All-in-all rather disappointing. Not a good day at the office.”
In a similar vein, Jonathan’s game did not end well. Reflecting on his performance, he states: “As I pointed out to my opponent around move three, this was a case of J. White as White playing Bird’s against J. Bird. This made us chuckle. Having regained my concentration, I played 20 moves or so of good chess, pressuring Black with clear-headed development and an interesting piece sacrifice. I emerged two pawns up in a position where we each had a queen, rook, piece and pawns. Sadly I then let my guard down, first losing my advantage and then blundering. A sour end to a good game.”
We seldom get anything from matches against Muswell Hill so a 3-all draw is a good result, although the defaults clearly helped. Next up is Hackney at home on 27 January.
| Ealing | Rating | Result | Muswell Hill | Rating |
| Alan Perkins | 2151 | 0-1 | FM Stanley Badacsonyi | 2373 |
| Martin Smith | 2137 | 1-0 | Michael Healey | 2242 |
| John Quinn | 2127 | 0-1 | Alexandros Ethelontis | 2130 |
| Jonathan White | 2030 | 0-1 | Joel Bird | 2082 |
| Hristo Colov | 1860 | 1-0 | Default | |
| Matthew Georgiou | 1820 | 1-0 | Default | |
| 3-3 |