Our penultimate match saw the mighty Clevedon A making the trek over to try to seal their place at the top of the league. Unfortunately, their board two didn’t turn up so Martin wasn’t able to take advantage of one of his few white games of the season. The default point did however give us a glimmer of hope of a win. 1 -0

I could see that on the table next to me James was making good progress against Stuart’s Polish opening. My game was a Semi-Slav proceeding on seemingly standard lines. Steve was playing the Scandinavian Defense, Portuguese Gambit. The other two games seemed well balanced at this stage.

James was pressing Stuart in the centre and now seemed to have the initiative. Later on, James used a vulnerable bishop and pawn as an opportunity to slide his rook and queen into a unstoppable threat on the seventh rank. Although Stuart’s final move was a blunder allowing mate, the alternative was going a clear bishop down. 2-0

I barely saw any of Aleksei’s game but Clevedon took the win. 2-1

In my game, on move 13 David played g6, probably making the king a little weak, given that I had a slight space and activity advantage on that side. I spotted the possibility of a knight sacrifice on f7, so set about backing it up with queen and rook attacking e6 having already placed a bishop on h6. Fortunately, that all went according to plan with David seemingly not seeing the threat. That led to me being an exchange and a pawn up with Black’s king very exposed, and victory followed fairly soon afterward. It didn’t help David that he was almost out of time at this stage. 3-1

Up until now, the other two games had looked very balanced, giving hope of winning the match. However, Steve says after holding the position well, a late blunder crept in and gave David the game. Meanwhile, Paul upset things further by tilting the balance in his favour against Ian.

Final score 3 – 3. A very respectable result given the opposition.