Tight match in London League season opener

East Ham 1 v Ilford 1 – 9 October 2019
Tom Barton

Ilford lost this opening match of the 2019-20 season 4.5 – 5.5.

With the average grade of the teams being 152.9 (East Ham) to 151.3 (Ilford) a tight match could be expected and was duly delivered. The top three boards halved out fairly early so the attention was on the lower boards. There was some back and forth on those but in the end draws happened on all boards except bottom which proved to be the match decider.

This match also marked the use of a new incremental time control for the London League of 75 mins plus 15 seconds per move. This seemed fine for the first match.

East Ham 1	GRADE	SCORE	Ilford 1	GRADE
Nigel Fleming	177	½ – ½	Russell White	188
Peter Jaszkiwskyj      (b)	167	½ – ½	Chris Fegan	187
Colin Ramage	158	½ – ½	Julian Hudson	168
Matthew Baker	158	½ – ½	Tom Barton	162
Jack Sheard	153	½ – ½	Venkatesh Subramanian	e150
Peter Rose	151	½ – ½	Aidan Corish	146
Martin Baker	150	½ – ½	Jason W Klimach	145
Roland Glotzer	148	½ – ½	Malcolm Gesthuysen	139
Edison Figueroa	143	½ – ½	Jef Page	128
Leon Cotter	124	1 – 0	Taha Undre	e130