Ealing 7 Hammersmith 1
: Created:28 Feb 2010 , byFor the second time this season Ealing's first team beat Hammersmith by six points in the Middlesex league. This latest result achieved on 25th February enables us to leaf-frog over Hendon in the first division table but our North London rivals will be keen to reverse this when they visit the Harvester in two days time.
Just for once I led the way with an accurate defence after my White opponent attempted to blow me away with the well-known bishop sacrifice on e6 against my Sicilian. In the middle-game my two minor pieces proved superior to his rook and two pawns. Incidently I was very disappointed to see the Sicilian Defence take a 4-0 thrashing in last week's mini-match between Judith Polgar and Gregory Kaidanov.
Veljko Stanisic achieved a bind on the position in his game and concluded with a pretty knight sacrifice. It was soon three-nil when Simon Randall broke through against his foe's French Defence. Simon like many players before him has found the French hard to combat but he has had two wins in a row against the Defence recently so perhaps he is getting the hang of the correct strategy.
Martin Smith triumphed with the venerable Goring Gambit and was amused to see opponent, John Woolley annotate 4.c3 with a question mark on his score sheet. In truth Martin got nothing out of the opening but made headway down the c and d files in the later stages of the middle-game to ensure that Ealing were certain of at least a draw. Adrian Ociepka defended well against an attack down the h file and it is probable that he was getting on top when an unfortunate blunder by Michael Price abruptly terminated the struggle.
Carsten Pedersen has proved a doughty opponent on board one for Hammersmith for many a long year. John Quinn kept his king in the centre and built up a kingside attack. Both players ran short of time but with Carsten's flag hanging by a thread John found a neat bishop sacrifice to win the game. I confess to not seeing much of Alan Perkins' game but he appeared to skilfully acquire some pawns and duly marched one of them to victory. On board eight Hammersmith gained some solace when Sainbayar Tserendorj got a cramped position and suffered the consequences.