We were again without Richard and Oscar, though at least with one we had plenty of notice and Rob was well-placed to fill in. Due to the other withdrawal being only hours before, Andrew was an absolute hero; rearranging his and his family's evenings in order to help us avoid the default points. For some reason, it's normally quite hard to entice people to Clevedon Cricket Club on a Monday night.

As Andrew was on schedule to arrive at 7:59, and in order to minimise any potential disruption, Martin leapt up to take my board 3, and Nigel and I moved up a board leaving Andrew free to have white on 5.

Nigel and David started with solid chess (though in fairness they also continued with solid chess and agreed a draw due to the solidity of their endgame. White took slightly more space, but black exchanged off some minor pieces to alleviate the cramp and a pawn-heavy rook and minor piece endgame seemed less appealing than splitting the point.

I'm not entirely sure what I did, but I know it wasn't good. I was winging the opening, which had the look of a Queen's Indian Defence, the awkward pieces of a Snake Benoni, while white had also got a comfortable e4 in. I played with the idea of attacking the backward e-pawn, but white's attack on my d6 weakness came through much more quickly.

Martin and David were churning through a quiet game, and though black appeared to be causing some problems with the pin on f3, Martin's defensive resourcefulness appeared to be holding things together. Rob was expanding quickly and the kingside and while Matthew attempted some counterplay on the queenside, the closed position meant the pieces required for defence were absent without leave.

Andrew took a good space advantage in a closed position and then calmly accepted a piece sacrifice that allowed a queen and rook invasion. Swapping the pieces off white had a relatively straightforward endgame (albeit with time pressures owing to the late start). Dominique stuck with a hypermodern opening, but was able to snaffle a bishop early on, and was relentless after that, quickly winning a queen for two pieces and wrapping up neatly.

With Nigel drawing, and Rob and Dominique wrapping up early, the 2.5-0.5 lead made me feel a lot more comfortable with my catastrophe. I missed a number of good moves for white as well as black and exchanged a queen for a rook and bishop. For good measure I also gifted all my pawns. Despite causing some grief with a tricky knight and eventually winning a number of pawns, the difference told when my time pressure resulted in a rook dropping off. Fortunately, Martin had been making excellent progress and with both sides invading with a rook a draw was a fair result.

The extra match point then came when Andrew showed how time trouble should be handled with a cool activation of his extra bishop, some exchanges, and the a game-winning bishop fork.

So far the team have managed a very respectable 50% score with only 25% attendance from our top two boards. Unfortunately, we're running out of play-up opportunities from our excellent substitutes, so let's hope we can round out 2019 with a full team against North Bristol A!