The A-team's visit to Clevedon promised to have little at stake except mid-table pride and placings. Unfortunately we were unable to get the two necessary reserves for the long haul down there but we were more than pleased to have Mike Passmore's presence.
The first half of the match saw us starting a point down but Nigel comfortably neutralised Peter thus giving us a springboard for success at 0.5-1.5!
The second half featured boards 4 and 5 where Mike and I combined to represent 106 years of playing for D&F. It was just like old times as the Mighty Passmore eliminated all the pieces to reach a probably winning pawn ending. Meanwhile I had managed to complicate things against Dave enough for him to have a long think about his move 20. It was now that the lights failed over our two boards! After moving the table, he decided to re-site his queen as well with a view to probing against my king. But first he offered a draw so I was anxiously looking at Mike's position to see how that game was going. It was still probably winning but you never know with tricky endings. I was pretty sure Mike had a neat finish so I agreed the draw and true enough Mike queened just one move before Black did on h1 and then delivered the coup de grace with a skewer on the long diagonal. So the old timers had brought it back to 2-2!
Now for the third half. Michael had a tricky middle game with B + N for R but two pawns down. Andrew had a fairly level heavy piece position with lots of pawns still on the board. We had a time advantage on both boards. Michael's position simplified to a N up but two pawns down. I didn't really understand the position but he was grimacing quite a lot so I was a bit worried in case he thought he was losing. It turned out he was frustrated because he didn't have time for the N to win enough pawns before his opponent queened one of his own. So he agreed a draw and all eyes turned to Andrew. By now they were down to one rook and a couple of pawns each. It was not really worth risking losing given the state of the match so another draw was agreed to make it 3-3.
Who needs six players anyway?