The D team had another tough away fixture on Wednesday evening, facing a South Bristol B team outranking us on all but board 6. The match result was a 4½-1½ win for South Bristol B, but many games hung in the balance throughout, with single moves late on deciding a few of the games.

Board 1 featured Nigel Wilcox as white against Thuvaragan Jeevananth (TJ I'm told). Nigel played his favoured Smith-Morra gambit, declined by TJ. The engine rather harshly claims an inaccurate opening 10 moves as both players opted to develop their position rather than exchange the c and d pawns. The engine then claims that Nigel had a sizeable advantage on move 12 - if and only if one specific line was followed - which frankly is too complicated and unintuitive for me to understand, let alone explain. Nigel played well and carved out another advantage by move 20 with an attack developing, but missed his opponent's threat and blundered his f2 pawn with check. There were some opportunities over the next few moves for Nigel to regain an advantage, but again these were very hard to spot, and after an exchange of most pieces the 2-pawn advantage that TJ had mustered was enough to induce resignation.

Alan Papier heroically stepped in last minute to cover our board 2 and for his troubles was treated to a match against the very strong, unbeaten Gideon Ansu, with the black pieces no less - cheers Alan! A controlled King's Indian Defence games ensued, with very accurate play from both and a completely even game for the first 28 moves. In an attempt to simplify the position, Alan offered to trade the final rooks, unfortunately not realising that he was losing his central pawn on d4 after the exchanges were finished. Gideon took the pawn and upon entering the endgame up a key pawn was able, after prolonged and astute defending from Alan, to press home the advantage and force resignation as he promoted a new queen. A really excellent game from Alan, whom we gratefully thank for stepping in so late to help us out.

I had the white pieces on board 3 against David Neagle. Vowing not to lose in 14 moves like my last game for Team E, I returned to my trusted Queen's Gambit setup and was pleased with my position out of the opening 15 moves. I didn't see any clear way of pressing on and saw no genuine counter threat from David, so I had resigned to exchanging our pieces on c5 and offering a draw. David seemingly had other ideas. He sacrificed his rook for my knight and 2 pawns, painfully exposing my King in the process - a sequence that had not once crossed my mind beforehand. Moments after seeing nothing over the board but a draw and letting my concentration lapse, here I was in a very unbalanced endgame, up an exchange but down 2 pawns and probably losing. With perfect play this was apparently a draw, but David outplayed me for much of the endgame and grew a sizeable advantage, forcing my rook to defend passively as he pushed 3 unstoppable pawns deep into my territory. Under some reasonable time pressure, an uncharacteristic blunder from David lost 2 of his most advanced pawns and with it his advantage. Both low on time we agreed to a draw, which the engine agrees with in the final position.

Joe Wing faced Gareth Cullen with the black pieces on board 4 in another highly balanced game, with the position equal after 20 moves and only the queens, rooks and pawns remaining. Joe opted to attack down the h file, putting both rooks on it and pressuring the castled King, but this gave Gareth a bit too much scope to centralise his queen and dominate the open d file with both rooks. Gareth made the most of this, collecting loose pawns with his queen and entering the endgame with a 5 vs 3 pawn advantage after forcing the rooks off the board. Joe fought hard and activated his King better than Gareth did, forcing the queens off and even managing to queen himself on the same move as Gareth did. Despite this Gareth retained an advantage throughout most of the endgame as he still had his pawn advantage, but focussing too much on giving checks, he allowed Joe to bring his King forwards and block the white pawns whilst simultaneously pushing his unopposed a pawn closer to promotion. The final position was a dead draw, with a queen trade forced by Joe leaving both with an unopposed pawn which would again queen on the same move. Recognising this, both players agreed to a draw.

Greg Sumner, E team captain, stepped up again to help us out and had the white pieces on board 5 against Jon White. Greg opted for the trusty Colle system and both players were excellent throughout and provided a great game to review. In a 6-move spell Greg was brave enough to play h3, g4, ne5, f4 and O-O, all strong moves and claiming a big space advantage, but Jon routinely replied correctly. By move 23 the heavy artillery had been exchanged and each player had a knight, a bishop, and 7 pawns remaining. By move 40 there were only the knights and 2 pawns each remaining, with the position never swaying more than 0.9 in favour of either player. Unfortunately, on move 42, Greg needed to move his King 'into the square' of Jon's passed a pawn to keep an eye on it defensively. Instead, Greg opted to bring his knight back as the defender, not seeing that the route back was covered by Jon's knight. One single mistake in an otherwise excellent game allowed Jon to play the final few moves perfectly and get his pawn to a2 unopposed, at which point Greg resigned. Once again Greg played a blinder for the D team, error free for 41 moves and an overall accuracy of 90%, only to face a seemingly unstoppable opponent on the day.

Board 6 saw a relatively quiet match between Mark Thwaites as black against Rod Taylor. I'm sure Rod's Polish opening of 1.b4 came as a surprise to Mark, but from there both played principled moves in the opening, developing their pieces and controlling the centre. After an exchange of knights and some tension between the central pawns, Rod played f4 on move 14. With neither playing seeing a clear way to develop their remaining pieces or eek out an advantage, a draw was agreed. Post game it appears that f4 was a mistake and gave Mark a positional advantage, but converting it doesn't appear clear cut.