Grendel were pretty much at full strength with a number of seasoned former division one players so we knew we had a fight on our hands.

Fairly early on Tom ran into complications and his opponent had an annoying bishop on h6 while Tom’s was not at home but had ventured out to h4, seeking a counterattack. Possibly Tom could have tried something different but White was able to get a rook on the seventh and after that there were too many threats to defend against.

Most of the other games were developing into more strategic tussles. Martin’s centre was quite gridlocked against Jerry. Eventually time trouble played a part in giving Martin problems which led to the loss of the exchange to a knight fork and, with it, the game.

Aleksei was probing for an advantage against Richard although he felt the latter, as Black, was possibly content with a draw. So now he is thinking about trying something a bit more aggressive next time against that particular defence.

Dave had a complicated game with Patrick. He reckons his opponent may have missed a trick to cause some problems but he avoided that (and a possible cheapo mate) and emerged with a comfortable enough draw.

James H was trying to force something against the younger Radford. But Ben had enough play to ensure the draw.

Meanwhile James T had won a solid pawn against the elder. In fact Bob found a way to regain the pawn although there were plenty of tactics abounding. Later on James managed to win a piece to bring the match result back to a narrow defeat.

Absentee captain Grant was initially outraged by the result but later amended that when he realized that his team was, in fact, "outrated" (by an average 50 points per board!).

Dave Tipper