It was our first visit to the refurbished pavilion at Clevedon and a pleasant surprise. Very nice tables, comfortable chairs and a nice new carpet made a good impression. It was still a bit chilly to start with, but the new heaters soon made us comfortable.

Andrew was the first to finish. Chris had blitzed him through moving very fast, but Andrew did well for some time soon reaching the sort of complex position he often gets and likes from the Scandinavian. However feeling the pressure of time he made an error and the game was soon over. I managed to get a bind on Max's queenside making it difficult for him to find a plan. He tried to break open with b3 but this just allowed my pieces to move into the vacant squares. I exchanged queen for two rooks and in a few moves he was unable to meet all the threats. Soon Chirag and Paul agreed a draw. They had had a tense opening but Chirag managed to achieve equality by a central pawn advance and although there was still plenty of play left, a draw was fair. So at 1.5-1.5 all depended on the remaining three games.

Stephen's position was a bit unusual. He had moved his king to g1 with a rook still on h1 which, with the h-pawn on h4, was obviously destined to come into play the long way round. Steve was though building an attack on the king whilst Dave's queen was putting pressure on white's queenside pawns. Oli and David had exchanged three pairs of minor pieces and central pawns leaving things looking fairly level. Martin was a-pawn down against Matt and had a blocked in bishop on b2 but there was still play left. How would the match turn out?

There was action in Oli's game where a sequence of-pawn captures left an unbalanced position with Oli having a 4-3 majority on the kingside and David having the only pawn remaining on the queenside on the 'a' file. David pushed his passed-pawn whilst Oli, with a rook on the 7th rank, attacked the f7 square. David was forced to bring his queen over to defend and in the resulting exchanges Oli lost his 'e' pawn and David his 'a' pawn leaving a dead drawn rook ending.

Stephen's rook had come into play in the expected manner and Dave's king was facing a frontal assault from queen, two rooks and a bishop. At a critical stage Dave put his queen on a square where it could not get back to defend in time and Stephen skilfully broke through.

Could Martin hold out for a won match? He sacrificed another pawn to exchange off his bad bishop, leaving him two pawns down in a rook and two minor piece ending. However his pieces were very active and he soon won a-pawn back and continued to harass black. Eventually it came down to a R, N + 2P v R, B and P. Wisely Matt concentrated on rounding up the white king rather than trying to promote a-pawn. He played this phase very well driving the king to the back rank and then towards a corner where mate was inevitable.

So yet another drawn match. Never mind, we're still ahead of our A-team!