With three of our squad unavailable for this crucial match against fellow contenders Bury St Edmunds (the team with the highest average rating in the league), we feared we would go down heavily and suffer a huge dent in our hopes of keeping Ipswich Sports Club within touching distance. And while Bury were without two of their squad, they still out-rated us by an average of 135 points per board, so it was a great achievement to share the points with them, although we were so very close to causing quite an upset by actually winning the match.
  Jim finished first, which was a little ironic as his board was played at the slowest pace - about half that of the other three boards. After 1.e4 e5 Jim continued with the rarely seen Bishop's Opening, which explains the slow pace as both players carefully trod some unfamiliar paths. It was a solid performance, with little coming off the board, and with neither willing to risk everything on speculative manoeuvres a draw was agreed.
  It was some time before Graeme followed. He opened with a Sicilian in which his opponent gained a significant special advantage on the queen's side and Graeme came under a significant amount of pressure. His opponent miscalculated a piece exchange and recaptured with the wrong pawn and lost his b-pawn, or it could have been a deliberate sacrifice, for it didn't look like a pawn that could be held for very long. Graeme had a very long think before trying to hold on to it, for a couple of moves at any rate, and the position rapidly descended into a rook and bishop ending, with Graeme now a pawn down and a significant time deficit. And when the remaining pieces came off the pawn ending was looking decidedly precarious, but thanks to some very precise defending Graeme was able to hold on and keep the match score level.
  Meanwhile Panagiotis was putting in a tremendous performance on top board. His English had led to a fairly complicated middle game when his opponent ill advisedly captured Panagiotis's d-pawn with a bishop following which he immediately faced the loss of that piece. He had a very long think before responding, which meant he was not only material down he put himself so far behind on the clock that he ended the game on the increments. He managed to fight on however in spite of his material deficit until a pseudo rook sacrifice threatened mate in two. He declined the sacrifice of course, but Panagiotis followed it with a check whereby the only legal move was to accept the sacrifice, so he resigned instead.
  We now found ourselves in the unexpected position of being ahead, and an assessment of Bob's position gave us reasonable grounds for hope that things would end that way. Bob kept his usual Modern approach and developed very well to equalise out of the opening. The board was threatening to become pawn-locked and as the pieces were exchanged we entered a rook and bishop ending with seven pawns each. On top of that, the bishops were of opposite colours, so a draw looked decidedly possible. Time was running low for both players, and Bob's opponent was clearly not going to be satisfied until he'd exhausted all avenues. Had Bob been able to exchange the rooks a draw would be easy, but constant attempts to break through finally succeeded when Bob ran out of moves and had to resign when his bishop got trapped and could not be saved.
  Considering how things could have gone, we were very happy with a draw. And while we may be seven points off the top, we have two games in hand, so a couple of 3-1 wins and we're back in the fray. Not much to ask is it?

Our first match of the new season, and we were hoping to emulate the demolition job Ipswich Sports Club had inflicted on Sudbury two days earlier. After all, the title could well be decided on how well the top three teams handle the bottom three. Rowland got us off to a good start, finishing first, and some way. He quickly established an advantage with the white pieces and wasted no time pressing home with it.
  It was quite a while before Panagiotis made it 2-0. He faced a Dutch opening and had a slightly better position throughout the opening. His opponent started burning time on the clock and soon enough Black's position became unpleasant. Down to a few minutes, Black moved his knight to b4 and resigned after Panagiotis responded by playing a5 with tempo (and taking that square away from Black's a-pawn), as the knight would soon be captured.
  Phil made it 3-0 after a trendy White line in the Caro Kann Exchange System (6.h3) quickly led to a set-up where Black gets the 2 Bishops at the price of an isolani d-pawn. Then Lots of manoeuvring for an advantage by both sides with nothing tangible, until Black grabbed White's a4 pawn on Move 25, unleashing a ten move flurry of tactics almost from nothing. The isolani d-pawn unisolates itself and becomes the hero of the hour, advancing to e3, granting his comrades a monster attack against White's king, none of which the player of the Black pieces had planned or anticipated. White wards off mate at an overly high price in material, counters with verve, traps and tricks but has to resign on move 40.
  Three nil up, but the chances of getting a clean sweep were looking very slim. Something went badly wrong for Andy against Tim Lunn's anti-King's Indian Smyslov System. Tim achieved a huge space advantage with powerful constraining pawns on d5 and f5, and a half-open h-file from which to attack the Black King. Both players ran short of time, and either side might have won in the chaos of the final 20 moves. An entertaining game to watch, from which a draw was probably the only fair outcome.