Tight London League match

Wanstead & Woodford 1 v Ilford 1, Wednesday 7 December 2022.
8 board match, G75 + 10
Tom Barton, captain.

With the Wanstead board 1 failing to show we went a point up. An hour in Jef had won a pawn against Mark Murrell with a neat tactic and most boards were even, however, Rahul took a pawn in his Najdorf Sicilian opening which left him badly behind in development against Ashley Freeman and Ashley’s knight sac crashed through Rahul’s position with devastating effect so we were back to even on the night. Anthony and Ian Hunnable reached an interesting position where Anthony avoided a swap in the centre of the board and offered a pawn but Ian had to weaken his rook position to take it, he declined to do so and it was a draw by repetition. I give the board position here and the game on Lichess

There then followed a cascade of draws following solid play by the team and it all fell to Neville’s game against Vladimir Parols where Neville was a pawn down with rook and knight against rook and bishop. Neville managed to win a pawn back but it left his knight at the edge of the board with Vladimir starting to roll a pawn majority forward on the other side of the board which proved terminal.

So we lost the match 4.5 – 3.5. A second tight loss in a week against Wanstead which is disappointing but on the plus side the team made a very credible effort as we were conceding 100 plus points on most boards and we were most unfortunate not to get something. Full match score details on the LL website: https://www.londonchess.org.uk/main.php