Clevedon gifted us a point start when their board six had a late emergency and they didn’t have time to organize a replacement.
As things settled down, there were no clear pluses for anyone, except that possibly James T was developing a positional advantage against DPK. And so it came to pass that he reached an ending with a much better placed rook with threats against various pawns. He was rather spoilt for choice as to how to convert but settled for a pair of connected passed pawns to clinch the point. Very nicely done and a 2-0 lead!
The middle part of the match saw our fortunes reversed as James H got into a defensive tangle against Stuart which led to the loss of too much material. Meanwhile Martin was under positional pressure from Matthew which finally resulted in the loss of a key pawn and, with it, the game. So, back to 2-2 with only the two top boards to finish.
On board 1 Oscar had Black against Max while Alexsei had White against Oleksii (try saying that after a couple of pints!). We know more about Aleksei’s game because it was nearer to watch and Mark was able to provide a summary: “Aleksei was very short of time when needing to decide whether to swap Queens into a B+N v 2B endgame. I think there was a win after Na4 (when Ne4 was played) and sacking the knight on b6. After that I think it was drawn but in the rush he dropped a knight.”
So we needed Oscar to win in order to save the match and he duly obliged. He was ahead on the clock and applying pressure, swinging a rook around the board to create various threats and in the end the pressure told but it was a nerve-wracking few minutes waiting for him to clinch his win and draw the match.
It had been important not to lose to Clevedon and there are now three teams on just one point after three matches but, thankfully, we have a marginally better Game Points score than the other two.