This time South Bristol were only able to field four of their "super-six", so in theory this gave us some respite compared to the first time around.

Quite early on we had shared the points on the top two. Nigel was caught with a weak isolated-pawn on e6 and, when it fell, Tyson had all the play. Meanwhile Lewis reciprocated nicely against Paul and by move 20 forced the win of a piece. Soon after, I reached an endgame against Tony which had no serious prospects for either side, so the match was level at 1.5 each.

All results were possible at this stage. We were hopeful of getting something as Martin was a-pawn up against Gerry and Mike and Dave were both level against Steve and Patryk. The first change was that Mike came under serious pressure and yielded a-pawn. We were fearing the worst but he defended very resourcefully and in the time scramble Steve missed the best line, so the score became 2-2.

Now if Martin could hang on to win and Dave to draw we could pull off a famous victory against one of the championship contenders. South Bristol needed the points to keep alive their title hopes and, wouldn't you know it, the last two games went their way. Sadly Martin's potentially winning ending fell foul of threats of perpetual check, while Dave was desperately unlucky not to be able to hold a rook and-pawn ending against a much higher rated player.

So, over the two matches we scored five game points against the seven of SBA and I would be surprised if they don't count themselves as most fortunate to have picked up all four match points against much lower graded opponents. But, as we have said before, there are no prizes for near misses and we shall simply have to knuckle down in the remaining fixtures if we are to retain our division one status.