This month the Surrey U1450 chess team has played two more games for the county championships in hopes to clinch first place from the Essex team. The first match was held in Dorking on the 5th of February where Surrey had their rematch against Essex who had won all three of their previous matches. After the first few games were over including Surrey’s captain David Flewellen and birthday boy Sammy Hedges Surrey were up 3.5-0.5 putting us comfortably in the lead. However, after 3 more games finished with 2 losses for Surrey and 1 draw Essex were back playing for a win with Surrey only being up 4-3. Surrey’s hopes to win the match were relighted after 2 very tactical wins on board 2 and 3 by Russell Hope and Sandy Smith giving Surrey a 6-3 lead; now only needing one draw to win many of the Surrey players waited anxiously for one of the 3 remaining boards to seal us the win. 10 minutes passed… 20 minutes passed… 40 minutes passed as we all waited patiently to see what the outcome would be. For over an hour the Surrey team waited for finally a draw on board 7 which sealed the victory for Surrey and dealt Essex their first defeat.

The next match for Surrey was on the 26th of February once again at Dorking playing Kent. Unlike the Essex match three weeks earlier this match was secured relatively quickly. Sol Sutton one of three players making their Surrey debut was the first to finish with an early win which was soon followed by another win on board 7, a loss on board 8 and then a win on board 9. With 2 more wins and another loss Surrey was up 5-2 and were extremely confident they would win the match. After a win from Russel Hope on board 2 Surrey only needed one more win to seal the match, and who better to give Surrey that win than captain David Flewellen who had brought together such a strong team for Surrey. After some time on the remaining three boards the final score was 7-5 cementing Surrey in second place with a chance to get first if they win their final round and Essex loses theirs.

Winning their match Surrey awaited the news of what happened during Essex vs Middlesex. For the first time this season Middlesex had a full team of 12 players and were keeping the match very interesting with a 4-4 tie after 8 games. However unfortunately for Surrey; Essex managed to win the match 6.5-5.5 in a very tight game. This means for Surrey to claim the number 1 spot in the U1450 county championship Surrey will have to win their next game on March the 12th where Middlesex will host them, but also Essex will have to lose their match against Kent who will host them.

All in all this has been an extremely fun and competitive tournament to play in and this was largely thanks to our Captain David who managed to get an amazing roster of players for the Surrey team after a very poor start to the season. He is very proud of the team no matter of the outcome of the final matches, as is the whole Surrey team although we still hope to win the top spot and progress to the U1450 national stage finals.