London League Draw!

London League D2 match – Battersea 2 v Ilford 1 – Thursday 12 January 2023.
8 board match, G75 + 15
Tom Barton, captain.

A last minute unavailability saw us travel to the Mindsports centre a player down but with a stronger team on paper I was hopeful we would finally get a match point.

Venkatesh lost early and Taha drew so the rest of the team had work to do. Rahul and I won on the top boards so the final three needed to get a plus to take us to a win. Neville had struggled to get to the venue and started 30 minutes down on the clock. He achieved an endgame of two connected passed pawns and bishop pair against a rook and bishop which is winnable but by this stage he was playing on the 15 second increment making it hard to work out the correct plan; when a bishop pair got swapped off the game became drawn.

Jef had lost control of his position and pressure told with his clock running down as he sought to hold things together. There was then a tense finish in Anthony’s game. A draw was expected but Anthony kept playing and was rewarded when his opponent played a4?

allowing Anthony to win.
So a drawn match 4-4 and a half point on the table.

Board                   Battersea 2                        Ilford 1         
1 (B)       1821      Muirhead, Samuel           0 – 1               Barton, Tom A   1935
2      1722      Wells, Tim                          0 – 1               Ghose, Rahul      1929
3 (B)       1702      Amabile, Domenico     ½ – ½      Twitchell, Neville H         1965
4      1726      Wessels, Hendrik        1 – 0     Subramanian, Venkatesh              1801
5 (B)       1637      Farahmandpour, Ehsan  0 – 1     Kent, Anthony R               1792
6      1588      Bassa, Hugo                       1 – 0               Page, Jeffrey      1644
7 (B)       1645      Riggs, Samuel                    ½ – ½               Undre, Taha       1575
8      1530      Tree, Djuna L                     1 – 0(def) Default