For the first night at our new venue, we had an exciting match in prospect; The B-team would take on University A. Earlier in the season (at the lovely 'Gromit Room') we had been a bit fortunate to nick two points off them. Okay, maybe steal two points off them!

Bang on time the Uni team arrived! You could tell by their swagger that they meant business. We also had a very good team, but unfortunately we were missing our board one. They had already predicted a 3.5-2.5 win. I had previously thought that this was a bit cheeky!

The match began, just a minute or two after 7.30pm. Unfortunately, it wasn't too long before I realised that their bold prediction might actually have been a bit conservative.

The first game to finish was a fairly quick draw between Reinhold and Tom. Stupidly, I always expect Reinhold to win! Fair enough, Reinhold did have the black pieces, and was playing an in-form player. We'll let him off this time!

Next to finish was Dominique, and again, far too soon for my liking!

Here was the first "interesting" Knight sacrifice of the night. How annoying that the rules of chess allow you to still Castle on move 13. Moreover, shutting down any of Dominique's sacrificial threats. Two to be precise, on a8 and f7. A few moves later and Dominique realised he was going to remain a piece down. He threw the towel in and Jonas was happy to accept.

Next to finish was Graham and Ian, and another bold Knight sacrifice, this time by Ian.

Understandably, I don't think the move Nxc7+ was on Graham's radar, as two moves later his Queen was lost. After the follow up Bb5+, rather than moving his King to d8 Graham moved it to f8, clearly worried about Nxf7 and the King and Rook fork. However he must have overlooked the nice discovered check Ng6, and the subsequent loss of his Queen.

3.5-2.5 was now really starting to look anything but cheeky. Oh dear!

Mark was playing Dan on Board 4 and this game was sort of split into three parts. For the first half of the game it is fair to say that Dan was pretty dominant, and bossing things. Then for half a dozen moves (and part two) Mark fought back and all went back to even.

However, the final part of the game swayed back to Dan when Mark offered the trade of Queens. Apparently, this was not the way to go. Unfortunately for Mark he was getting low on time, and Dan was not going to let up again. His Rook, Knight and two marauding Pawns combined well, and with one Pawn sure to promote, a forced mate was coming. Nice finish!

Finally to the top two boards. I think it is fair to say that this brought together 4 of the most talented players in The League. These games could obviously easily have gone either way, so not that surprising when they both ended up as two solid draws. Not early tame draws, of course, but well fought out draws, with never much in it.

So we lost 1.5-4.5, and there was no stealing here. University gave us a good old walloping, and very well played to them.

Time to relax. The B team can just get on with enjoying their last three matches, and stop concerning themselves with what damage they can do to help out our A team. It has to be said that we feel a bit guilty for saving our worst bit of damage for them. Maybe Downend & Fishponds are not as full of scheming snakes as people might think!

It is now all in our A-team's hands, as funnily enough it also is for University and Horfield. Who would predict it going right down to the last match of the season when University visit us again on April 26th. Goodness knows what their prediction will be for that match!