After a string of five away matches at last we had the pleasure of playing at the Cross Hands. The good news was that we consolidated our mid-table position of having five points with little difficulty.

We didn't make the best use of the white pieces. The Devizes contingent improved massively compared to the previous week's outing to Patchway but two fairly quick and unchallenging draws for Andrew C and me were not exactly what the doctor ordered. And then Mike followed up with careful progress but yet another half point.

All of which made the three Black games very interesting. Oli defended the exchange variation of the French. He emerged from difficult pressure with a nominal advantage and carefully avoided the trap of winning the exchange when Matias offered it. But, after some minor piece exchanges, Oli's remaining ones were somewhat cramped and a neat rook sacrifice led to the win of Oli's queen.

Paul and Steve played a fairly uneventful game for 23 moves before Paul decided to give up a knight to keep Steve's King exposed and under various threats. It wasn't decisive but Steve's development was hampered. Both sides found most of the best moves and, after Paul possibly missed one devilishly cunning continuation, the game petered out into an endgame that neither felt he could win in the little remaining time.

Andrew M knows his pet defence very well but on this occasion I'm afraid he rather mucked it up. I hesitate to mention that by move 14 four moves of his QB had led to it being developed on c8! However, Bob sportingly kept him in the game and failed to deliver the killer blow. Andrew fought so well that he clawed back to virtual equality until a sad error cost a whole rook just when we were beginning to dream the impossible dream.

So, as Eric Idle would have said, it could be described as a very satisfactory result in that we had comfortably achieved our secondary goal of staying out of the relegation places. I think we'll leave it at that.