When we arrived at Grendel, Roger warned us they had problems putting a team out, but they still had Chris, Alistair and himself plus three less regular players. It was a big surprise when Chris Beaumont failed to arrive and we hope nothing too serious has happened but it was a huge shame for Lewis that he didn't get a game after coming all the way from Swindon.

We were soon two up when my opponent missed a couple of tactics. Not long after, Javier succeeded in trapping Roger's bishop and when Nigel agreed a draw with Alistair we had the two match points in the bag.

Mike had more than enough positional compensation for a mislaid-pawn and the pressure told when John blundered a piece. For the next half hour we all watched to see if Martin could pull off a remarkable recovery from a dodgy opening, despite being a couple of-pawns down and well behind on the clock. He succeeded in conjuring up a series of tricky possibilities for attack, but his opponent was able to parry them all and finally, as the threat level mounted, Martin's flag fell.

So a win by 4.5-1.5 brings us up to seven points and it remains to be seen if we can continue to catch up with the teams above us.