Ilford A v Wanstead A, 6 March 2023.
NCCL DivA, 6 board match, G80 + 10. Toss won by Ilford- White on odd boards.
Jef Page, captain.
ILFORD A 3-3 WANSTEAD A
2057 DAVID SALAMI 1-0 JOHN CAWDREY 2079
1915 TOM A BARTON 0-1 DAVID SHERMAN 2067
1816 VENKATESH SUBRAMANIAN 1-0 STEVEN RIX 2009
1674 JEF PAGE 1-0 ASHLEY FREEMAN 1998
1597 TAHA UNDRE 0-1 IAN D HUNNABLE 1908
1779 DANIEL LOWE 0-1 PHIL STANILAND 1901
Adhar Jaiswal was down to play but had to drop out at the last minute due to an illness so as ‘supersub’ I stepped in; hopefully Adhar recovers soon. Missing a few regular players we had a new member David Salami on board one for a tough start to playing for Ilford. All of us were outgraded as you can see. We only narrowly lost to Wanstead in the away match so this was the return match.
Venkatesh arrived a bit late, seemed to have a tricky game a pawn down but after Steve allowed a tactic he made short work of the rest of the game. Taha & Daniel were always under pressure. Ian managed to create a passed centre pawn backed up by his Rooks which proved decisive. Similarly Tom’s Dutch Defence got awkward, his queenside undeveloped, Sherman gained control of the middle game and finished decisively.
I found Freeman’s opening difficult to defend against- he isolated my weak d-pawn in a very open Caro-Kann, I gambled on causing difficult complications so attacked to break out. As I only had about 20 seconds remaining and with Ashley‘s Queen offside, I attacked it with a pawn thinking it would force him to retreat- only to find it was completely trapped! The right move for the wrong reason but a happy result. The last game to finish was David’s and it’s always satisfying when you can put in a new member to make his debut and he wins, and makes the score all square. He put in a strong attack against John’s King which was beaten off and in the resulting endgame although John was pawns up, skilful play by David eliminated his advantage and trying to find a win, John lost on time.
Wanstead and Barking in the NCCL are tying for Division A top spot, 5 points each. Chingford and Ilford are fighting for bottom spot, 2 points each. See the table at: https://ecflms.org.uk/lms/node/69105/tables