9 Nov 2021 – DHSS 1 v Ilford 1
Ilford are in Division 3 East of the reconstituted London League and this was the first match back as over the board chess gets restarted. Unfortunately we were short of two players and had a late Covid withdrawal which made it a 7 board match by agreement with the opposition.
Taha got into trouble in the opening leaving his King stranded in the centre of the board and that eventually proved terminal. Jef came out of the opening OK but then lost the initiative and ended up taking a draw. Venkatesh played the smoothest game of the evening with good control of his game winning a pawn and with positional control converting to a win. Neville went well ahead on the clock in his game, entered an endgame that was about level but then pushed a little too hard. My game was a Kan Sicilian and finished last, it was an interesting encounter where I missed a winning move and with time very short for both me and my opponent we agreed a draw as it was difficult to calculate the best way to take the game forward. See my game here.
With the two defaults we lost the match but over the five boards played we gave a good performance despite being outgraded.
| DHSS 1 | Ilford 1 | |||||
| 1 | Simon Lunn s2007C |  | 1-0 | Neville H Twitchell s1927B |  | |
| 2 | Gary Cook s2000C | | 1/2-1/2 | Tom A Barton s1916D | | |
| 3 | Greg Edwards s1872C  | | 0-1 | Venkatesh Subramanian s1818D | | |
| 4 | Brendan O’Gorman s1864A | | 1/2-1/2 | Jeffrey Page s1625C | | |
| 5 | Robert Parsons s1750B | | 1-0 | Taha Undre s1554D | |
With two defaults the match score was 5 – 2 to DHSS
DHSS provided excellent playing conditions for the five games played. Many thanks to their captain David Gilbert.
Tom Barton, LL Captain
Ilford Chess Club 