The Hillingdon A team got a creditable draw against Harrow A on 17^th January.

Jason got a good win against a higher graded opponent with his Bird’s opening; black fianchettoed, got cramped on the queen side, sacked the exchange (rook for bishop) to free himself up but Jason wrapped up the win.

Andrew Harley in his first game for the club, and in his first competitive game for a couple of years, got to a rook and pawn ending a pawn down, almost held up but couldn’t quite squeeze out the draw.

Mark got a draw as black against a Veresov Attack (d4, nf6, nc3, d5, bg5), was never in much trouble and probably should have played on longer in the endgame of bishop and pawns vs a knight and pawns. I couldn’t see easy ways to progress, but the computer has it in black’s favour and there were plausible ways for white to slip up.

Chris played a deferred Alapin against his opponent’s Sicilian Defence. After an early series of exchanges in a fairly closed position, Chris had an advantage of 2 knights versus knight and bad bishop. Chris manoeuvred his knights, including a delightful (his words not mine!) Nb3-a1-c2-a3-b5, creating a positional bind that the chess engines evaluated as +4 (with equal material). At the time control, Chris forced the exchange of the final major pieces but used the wrong knight. This allowed his opponent to break the bind with a pawn sacrifice, a good knight manoeuvre and a dose of good fortune. The ending quickly reached a drawn position.

Greenford next…

Ealing A	Gd.	Result	Harrow A	Gd.
Andrew Harley	2208	0-1	Steven Coles	2077
Chris Greenshields	2042	½-½	Miroslaw Walkusz	2063
Mark Winterbotham	1880	½-½	Nevil Chan	1986
Jason Obihara	1754	1-0	Nigel Aldritt	1961
		2-2