League: TVCL, Season 2021-2022
Played : 4th October, 2021

Ealing B had a difficult match losing to Surbiton C with the following score : 0.5 – 5.5

Geoff Richards did well to draw the match with his opponent Paul McCauley.

Board	Colour	Ealing B	Results	Surbiton C
1	Black	Trevor Bates	0-1	Andrew Boughen
2	White	Tony Braine	0-1	David Cole
3	Black	Subas Subbaraj	0-1	Alexey Markov
4	White	Jerry Scott	0-1	David Razzell
5	Black	Geoff Richards	1/2 – 1/2	Paul McCauley
6	White	Neville Rowden	0-1	Phil Goodings

Comments from some of the team members after the match :

Tony Braine
To celebrate the return of over the board chess, Tony decided to open E4 for his first time in a competitive match. Unfortunately, ignorant of the nuances of the French as white, he was a pawn down after seven moves and a rook down after fifteen. He created some counter play and took the initiative, reducing the deficit to three pawns. Tony pressed strongly but his opponent played very soundly avoiding a number of traps and at the time control had maintained his advantage and the endgame was hopeless for white.

Trevor Bates
On board 1 Trevor Bates, playing Black, transposed the opening into a Benoni type position. After some tactical maneuvering by both players he attempted to simplify a complex position but overlooked a quiet move by White which placed his Bishop en prise but attacking a Rook whilst also discovering an attack on the Queen with his own Rook. Black consequently lost a Rook for a Bishop and Pawn and his position quickly fell apart and he resigned.

Neville Rowden
Neville Rowden played White and opened with c4 and continued to play defensively bringing out his minor pieces. Black responded in kind without too much excitement until the middle of the game. Unfortunately, in an exchange of pieces, White found itself a pawn down which proved fateful at the end of the game. However, the end game was quite exciting as the remaining rook from each side was trying to defend their attacking pawns. Both players made two blunders but White made three mistakes against Black’s two mistakes – a very close game.

Subas Subbaraj
Subas Subbaraj played black responding to White’s Queen d4 opening with Nf6. At move 9 Black made a bad strategic error and the game went downhill for Black eventually and inadvertently losing the queen. Losing the queen quite early in the game meant Black had little to no chance of consolidating the lost position and resigned. It was quite a short game.

Jerry Scott (playing white)
The opening was a fairly standard queens pawn.  However, on move 6, Black made an earlier c4 push for which White probably should have exchanged.  However, not having done so, Black applied considerable pressure to the IQP.  White was forced to shore up the defences for the IQP, got behind on development and was unable to castle.  It was a fairly short slide into an unrecoverable position from that.

White was rather rusty in respect of OTB play and failed on three occasions to remember to push the button on his clock!  Inevitably, this led to time difficulties in the later stages of the game (which, in turn, led to sub-optimal play and missing moves which might have recovered the situation) and ultimately a failure to achieve the required 30 moves in 60 minutes.  Officially, Black therefore won on time, but was well ahead anyway by this point which saved White from the effort of having to resign!

Geoff Richards (playing black)
An even and uneventful game between two evenly matched players. He should have played 15 Nb5 whilst he had the chance!

These are some of the games played in this match (analysed by Stockfish engine and annotated).

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Neville’s game: White resigned

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Subas’s Game: Black resigned

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Jerry’s Game: White lost on time

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Geoff’s game : Drawn

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