With all seven of our squad available, the skipper took the opportunity to rest his aching limbs after his exploits on the Icelandic ski slopes. So he missed our first outing to the new Clifton premises in downtown Redland. Very posh! Having lost 5-1 earlier at home to Clifton A's regular squad (excluding Igor, who was replaced on that occasion on board six by Manuel), we were a bit surprised to find that this time he was replaced by an IM on board two! The name Downend and Fishponds evidently strikes fear bordering on panic into our opposition, judging by all the stops that have been pulled out against us this season. (I expect the skipper would have been much more scathing but he does have editorial control.)

Edit: They're all gits.

And so to the chess. Actually we shared the room with our E-team who were playing Clifton C, well, four of them, as Clifton had pre-warned two defaults. Which of our teams could get the better result we wondered. The A-team started solidly enough. Guess who agreed the first draw. Yes, you got it in one. But Black against John is no picnic, so well done, Andrew. And then Dominique neutralised Dave and I managed to hold Duncan so we had three draws from two Blacks on the bottom three boards. We couldn't realistically have expected much more.

Next to finish was Oscar, who tried an ambitious Queen sacrifice against James rather than head for a drawish endgame. Sadly, it didn't work out. Nigel's Nimzo-Indian against Andrew led to a somewhat blocked position where his two knights were more restricted than the opposing bishops but he held on until a rook invasion sealed his fate. This left it to Richard to try to get some respectability to the score. Building up an attack against Gareth's King, he had all the threats but precious little time and was soon playing on the increment. Gareth sacrificed an exchange and soon after made an illegal move. We were mighty glad that Geoff was on hand to add the two minutes to the clock and after Richard won a second exchange he had enough time to combine defence against enemy passed pawns with molesting the bishops, eventually winning one of them.

So in the end it was a respectably narrow loss but one that may very well turn out to be highly significant when the league is all over, since we now have the strange record of having beaten Bath A twice while losing twice to Clifton A. Sorry, Bath! Oh, yes the E-team did do rather better, running out winners by 5.5-0.5.