Certainly not!

This could have been a far closer loss by a mere 3.5-2.5 but there was no point in wasting wins and draws against one of the best teams who were always likely to beat us anyway! We'll save them for later.

In fact, a bit like the South Bristol match, we were flattered that Horfield felt the need to field their latest star against us. Nigel did very well to neutralise Dan, although by then unfortunately Rob had miscalculated the defence against Derek. This should have made the scores level at 1.5 each because I had comfortably won the first of my two games with Phil. Sadly, he won the sequel, which was the only one that scored any points. Yet another fine position thrown away...it can't go on forever, can it?

Meanwhile Dominique had played well in his debut match for the B-team to secure a comfortable draw with Harvey. Two games to go, then, and some sort of miracle needed. Black against Steve always requires total accuracy and unfortunately one or two slips by Mike led to great pressure down the half open c-file which finally resulted in breakthrough. Martin's game with Alex was probably dead drawn from about move 20 but it was a fatal error on move 46 which allowed the loss of a key pawn, making it 1-5 in the end. It might appear to have been a bit of a rout but, in reality, we are just setting up a second half recovery.

So now for a refreshing break from league chess while we re-charge our batteries. A Merry Christmas to all and watch out for us in 2016!