Uxbridge C			Ealing B
1	Ron Foale	1629	0-1	Xavier Cowan	1893
2	Shlok Parakh	1643	1-0	Simon Healeas	1861
3	Ivan Hauptman	1589	1-0	Tony Braine	1715
4	Fabrizio Gemelli	1561	0-1	Daniel Jennings	1622
5	Pasquale Vacirca	1465	0-1	Alastair Johnstone	1580
			2-3

Ealing came from 2-0 down to 3-0 up in a hard-fought match at the Ivy Club. Firstly Simon fell to the rapidly improving Uxbridge youngster on Board 2 shortly followed by Tony on Board 3. Tony came unstuck on the White side of a Sicilian Grand Prix attack. Faced with some accurate defence, Tony spent too much time trying to find an advantage that simply wasn’t there and was eventually punished for this when, in rushing, he blundered away his queen with predictably terminal consequences.

The fight back began with Xavier’s win on top board. His decision to play an unusual set-up against Black’s Dutch Defence didn’t achieve its desired objectives and the position was objectively level out of the opening. As usual, Xavier flirted with time trouble, down to increments while his opponent had 34 minutes left. But in an attempt to exploit this situation his opponent started moving too quickly. But Xavier is very cool under time pressure and has a sharp tactical awareness which allowed him to win a rook after a series of piece exchanges, deciding the game.

Daniel then levelled the match with a fine win on the Black side of the Scandinavian. Here’s the deciding moments:

Al of which left the outcome of the match on my shoulders. Happily, I had enjoyed a comfortable game from the outset and, eschewing the spectacular for the banal, I pressed home my endgame advantage rather than risk miscalculation in a sacrificial attack. Post match analysis however suggests I could have cropped the game by some 20 moves if I had chosen the latter route! Here’s the game: