NORTH CIRCULAR CHESS LEAGUE – Division A
24 October 2019
Report by Jef Page
BARKING 1 4-2 ILFORD 1
186 Jeff GOLDBERG 0-1 Tom BARTON
165 John WHITE ½- ½ Neville TWITCHELL
155 Colin RAMAGE 1-0 Syd KALINSKY
150 J ROBINSON 1-0 Venkatesh SUBRAMANIAN
143 J FIGUEROA ½ – ½ Jef PAGE
124 George MONK 1-0 Taha UNDRE
Ilford won the toss: White on odd boards
Well, we the found the improvement from our 5-1 loss against Barking last week and made a bit of progress by at least winning 1 game. Taha got off to a bad start, was never able to develop his pieces properly and was overwhelmed. Taha castled q-side and George Monk won a mass of pawns. It was uphill all the way for us. Syd and Venkatesh got no change from Ramage & Robinson and both got the advantage quickly. My opening was nothing to shout about so with no counter-play, I gambled on a risky k-side pawn advance supporting a Q, R & N attack and it paid dividends as suddenly all my pieces got into the attack & Figueroa was very happy to take a draw even though I only had seconds left on the clock.
On the top boards we did very well. Neville pressed hard for a Q,N & 4 pawns win but White calmly held his defence together whilst on board one Goldberg again played his favourite Caro-Kann against Tom and got a clear passed pawn running for home. However, with Jeff being so short of time he lost all his pawns and suddenly, although he won Tom’s Bishop, Jeff’s lone Knight was left to hold off Tom’s pawns which became impossible.
Ilford Chess Club 