Steve Meek had assembled a strong team for our match against the current league leaders with the top boards given extra heft from the appearances of Oscar and Tyson, whilst Aron was rewarded for his great form this season with promotion above the older stagers Nigel and Reinhold.

Oscar soon justified his place on Board 1 by equalizing quickly with the black pieces and a draw was agreed in short order. At that time Steve on Board 2 had played a standard looking pawn sac with f5 to obtain active play; Tyson on Board 3 had become embroiled in a blocked position from a closed Sicilian where his queenside play compensated for the e4 square. Aron was showing no nerves on Board 4 having stopped his opponent castling and established a freely developed position. On Board 5 yet another hole in my opening repertoire had been revealed when my opponent's pawn sac had lead to a space advantage where my pieces were passively placed and I had lost the right to castle. Reinhold's position on Board 6 showed promise as he had got in all the right moves on the white side of a King's Indian including a successful c5 pawn thrust.

Steve was next to finish as his play slowly dissolved and then James hit back decisively to gain the win.

This was compensated by Aron who had converted his early pressure to an endgame in which his control of the b file with his rook secured another fine win.

The match seemed to be swinging in our favour and this was reinforced as Tyson broke through in the centre in masterful fashion with his knight coming to e3 and his queen covering any problems on the h file. The best game of the match.

So 2.5 to 1.5 up and Reinhold was completely in control with a great passed d pawn whilst I was trying to deal with the gathering storm of f5 which white was preparing. Reinhold won the exchange and calmly clinched the match, I was far from calm! After a mutual error (28 Rf3 allows Bxb5) my best practical chance seemed to be an exchange sac to liberate the French bishop. Some tactics ensued as both sides ran short of time. The computer plays these positions better than humans and I ended up a rook down but hoping Dan would allow Qf1 mate after 43...Rc8 44 Rxc8. He didn't fall for that one but a few moves later his exposed king enabled me to scramble to a draw (there may be some other lines in which I can exchange one pair of rooks, take the g4 pawn and then give up my queen for the other rook and set up a fortress with Ph6 and g5 and Rf4/h4 which also seems to hold). A very stressful game for me but a good 4-2 win for the team to keep us in with a longshot for the title.