Bristol League Chess (Prt.3)

Thanks to Phil Nendick for the following report on the Clifton 'A'- Horfield 'A' match. If you click on the title it should, with any luck, take you to the Horfield home page.

Switching Steve and Derek so that Steve could have a break from playing James Cobb only managed to pair Derek against his previous opponent since Cobb wasn't playing. Steve ended Duncan's unbeaten run when the latter "self destructed" from a reasonable position and we were one up. Elsewhere we were doing well although Harvey was suffering with a backward c pawn but got a reprieve when David blocked the file and then followed up by nearly gifting a bishop, only realising at the last possible moment that he was about to leave it en prise. In my game we played the same first 10 moves from our previous encounter before I unleashed a sharp line I had found on Chessbase just an hour before the match. On our 3rd wintry visit to the Polish club in 22 days I was also pleased with my clothing preparations: body warmer, sweatshirt and fleece combo did the trick. After several hairy moments the game petered out to a drawn rook and pawn ending. Meanwhile Derek had taken a draw, Harvey had succumbed to David's relentless grinding down and boards 3 and 4 also went south after looking promising.
Our 3rd match loss in a row sees us out of the cup and league contention, but we should achieve a respectable 3rd place in the league if we can emulate our B team and return to winning ways against Clevedon.