Just how many errors make the record for a six board chess match? It seemed that last Thursday we were trying to make a joint challenge for an entry in the Guinness Book of Records when the B-team visited South Bristol B.

On board three Martin had mishandled the opening against Sam Gower and was soon under considerable pressure with a backward-pawn, rooks doubled against it and various other threats going on. He had to shed an exchange to stay on the board.

The bottom three boards looked level enough but Mike had won an exchange, although admittedly Bob Radford's knight had quite a good outpost.

Now for the first absolute howler. Sam still had his rooks bearing down from e4 and e8 with his queen joining in from d5. Martin's queen on f3 was helping to defend the e3 pawn. Sam played a move which will probably haunt him for months: Rxe3. Martin blinked. He sat still. He looked at Sam and blinked again. After what seemed like an age he finally moved his queen to d5 to remove the undefended piece.

I had been defending reasonably combatively against Richard Garrett, offering a draw at one stage, when he caught Sam's bug and kindly blundered the exchange leaving a potentially simple winning ending. He offered a draw based on my clock situation so I had a quick look around — the bottom three looked OK and I had just seen Jerry shake hands from what I thought was a better position so two and a half points from the top three boards looked pretty good — and I accepted. How many errors was that? Well Jerry had apparently overlooked a combination leading to a back rank mate threat and so with my draw that left the match tied at 1.5 each.

Mike struggled as tenaciously as he could but despite his material advantage a time shortage worked against him and Bob's pawns pushed through to victory.

That left us with Andrew against Gerry Jepps and Dave versus Ben Radford. Andrew had all the play, having broken through with his rooks and, although there were opposite coloured bishops, a win was on the cards. Dave's game was much more drawish and he was a bit low on time.

Then Gerry gave Andrew the chance to win an exchange. With the right move order this may have been a winning opportunity but somehow the bishop and advanced-pawn were more threatening than the two rooks and in time-trouble Andrew set up a helpmate position and had to concede a rook and the game. Meanwhile Dave handled his clock superbly and forced through a-pawn promotion with plenty of seconds to conclude the win. So, two wins that should have been a draw and a loss, three losses that should have been at least a win and two draws and a draw that in the end should have been a win. For sheer thrills and comedy it was better than anything the Bard himself could have penned.

But bearing in mind the average grading disadvantage of 13 points per board this was not a disastrous defeat. It could have been 5-1 if things had gone slightly differently, although, to be fair, considering the number of horrible moves, it could also have been 1-5! There was plenty of room for encouragement for the matches still to come.