We were fresh from our stunning victory against Bath A, so we naturally felt over-confident to be facing Clifton A, who despite a number of availability jitters, are making a believable push for the title. Speaking of availability, Andrew withdrew a few hours before, but thanks go to Keith for stepping up to the plate for the second week in a row and making the journey from Northampton that little bit less stressful. Ian leapt up to board 4 to keep the white pieces, while I took the black pieces on 3 with minimal complaining and only a few tears.

Clifton arrived fashionably late, which gave me time to chastise members of our own club that have not yet voted in our Game of the Month vote. Hint, hint.

Richard was up a-pawn on move 2 as black, so naturally we all assumed the win would follow. As it happened James had compensation and Richard quickly returned the material. Nigel, who had suggested to my complete shock, that he wouldn't be averse to a relatively short draw, found he was playing Gareth and had to rule that out. Snatching a gambit pawn, white appeared to slowly be consolidating, but was facing the long term difficulties of facing an endgame bishop pair. John and I started symmetrically enough as we played through a reversed Meran Semi-Slav, which sounds so much more exciting than a Colle. For some reason I felt it necessary to remove all defending pieces from my kingside, which compelled John to set himself up for a big attack.

Ian was demonstrating why preparation is over-rated as Dave played nothing like what I would have expected. Both sides played aggressively, with white hunting black's centralised king and black hurling everything down the queenside. Duncan took the space against Dominique's hypermodern venture but black soon struck back in the centre. Keith appeared to be avoiding the traps in the Dragon that Manuel uses so effectively to bamboozle me.

While Richard moved towards the kingside James managed to build a big attack with his isolated queen pawn and open the kingside. While black struggled to co-ordinate and develop, a pin and x-ray tactical combination led to a lovely queen sacrifice mate. Dominique had also slightly more than equalised and snatched a-pawn as his reward. Duncan then offered a tricky sacrifice that, although not objectively sound, produced the desired effect and a mating battery on the h-file. Although I fancied Keith's position for a while, he swapped off and if there was any advantage, it disappeared. Facing a well-protected passed-pawn, but the position stodging up, they decided to split the point. 0.5-2.5. Clifton only needed another half point to secure the match. I knew I could help with that.

John had gone in for some wild tactical complications instead of doing the decent thing and offering me a draw. At the end of the mess, John was significantly down on the clock, but I had a loose-pawn. I thought he would leave it well alone as it meant that all 3 black heavy pieces, and the light-squared bishop would be gunning for the exposed white king, which would struggle to stay defended. What I wasn't counting on was, in John's own words, "a brainfart". He snatched the-pawn. I made ominous-looking moves for a bit thinking I could actually win, before allowing another tactical mess that involved exchange sacrifices and cost me another pawn. Fortunately, John was more than happy to believe that my remaining pieces could get one back and be enough of an irritant to agree to a draw.

As some compensation for the match so far, Nigel was making good progress with his extra-pawn, but the game turned when black established two central passed-pawns that proved too much of a challenge to stop. A similar story happened on board 4 when Ian, who had outplayed Dave for the most part, chose the wrong plan and his attack was suddenly halted leaving one of the black queenside pawns to promote without issue.

1-5 feels like a tough score for us to swallow, especially considering we had strong positions in most of the games at one time or another, but it would also but unfair to say that Clifton weren't the better team on the night and didn't play good chess themselves. We'll just have to hope we can nick some points in the final two matches of the year against Horfield C and the always unpredictable University A.