Fresh from our summer recess, the C team hosted North Bristol A for the first match of the season and our first six board league match in a long while. It proved to be a hard-fought affair, although as with previous North Bristol matches, all conducted in good spirits. With our captain Grant cheering us on from across the Atlantic (it's alright for some), Steve W stepped up to the plate as acting captain and made sure everyone was where they were supposed to be, when they were supposed to be.

In my case that meant board six with the white pieces and the unspoken instruction to not muck it up. I sat down ready, head full of all the 1.c4 Nf6 and 1.c4 e5 positions I had been studying over the summer break, only to stifle a groan a few moments later when my opponent played 1...c6. Luckily it transpired that my opponent, while no pushover in terms of calculation ability, was more used to Caro Kann lines against e4 than anything else. His hasty c5 push gave me a couple of pawns and the opportunity to hunt the king, and it was over in by move 18. 1-0

Alan, new to Downend in the time that I've been playing but a regular on the Bristol league scene, was next to me on board five and the next to finish. From my occasional glances over, I thought he had a much more intricate and complex game on his hands with the Black pieces, but one where he did a good job of carving out a space advantage, that turned into an infiltration by his major pieces, that turned into an unstoppable assault on the White king. His opponent's resignation put us on 2-0

These were the skirmishes, however, compared to the real battles taking place on the top four boards. Free to kibitz, I wandered up and down the boards and decided I liked the look of James' position as White on board four, Steve was doing a good job of shutting down a strong opponent with the Black pieces on board one, and Dave's game on board three made my head hurt. Jack had a complicated-looking position on board two, with plenty of pieces still on the board and thus a cramped middle game with lots of tactics to calculate. A couple of moves can swing those sorts of games one way or the other and with both sides finding strong ideas, in the end it was Jack's opponent who managed to gobble a bit of extra material and gain the advantage. 2-1

Dave was next to finish. By his own admission he had walked into quite a bit of trouble in the opening, but he then did a marvellous job of complicating the position such that his opponent had a hard task converting the advantage. The only catch was that Dave himself was in clock trouble, having had to spend most of his time working out how to pull the game back. Faced with a choice between trying to fend off his opponent's attack or introducing further complication with Sicilian-esque rook sacrifices on c3, he chose the solid approach. I think he would probably have held it with a few more minutes to think. As it was, with under a minute left his opponent was able to capture a key pawn and follow up with a tactical shot to win material. 2-2

With everything tied up at two apiece, attentions turned to James on board 4 next. Having been ahead on the clock, he settled in for a long think - but a necessary one, as his opponent was continually coming up with the goods in terms of defensive resources. Eventually it simplified to two rooks apiece but with a slight advantage to James in terms of pawn structure. With both players in time trouble, James gave a check to the Black king on the sixth rank, in effect forcing a rook trade and simplifying the position. Or so we thought. Instead, James' opponent hastily grabbed a pawn to block the check, not noticing until he touched it that Black's rook was hanging. He resigned and gave us the advantage back. 3-2

So it all came down to Steve's game, which had progressed into an queen, rook and minor piece endgame where both sides had competing advantages. The argument for Steve was that he was a pawn up and had succeeded in doubling White's pawns on the f file, whilst his Rook was well-positioned on the open c file. The argument for his opponent was that Black's extra pawn was isolated on b7 and that he had an active queen and light-squared bishop to Steve's slightly more passive queen and knight. For anyone looking to improve their endgame play, this one is worth analysing - I know I'll be looking at it.

Following the theme for the evening, both clocks were looking heavily depleted. Steve responded tenaciously to White's attempts on his b pawn and succeeded in getting the minor pieces off, then the queens. He was then faced with a choice of whether to trade more pawns and liquidate the position down into what would almost certainly be a drawn rook endgame. The problem was that he had no time to check the scoresheet and didn't know if the draw was enough. He thus chose a pawn push that kept play alive but left him with a worse position if White played correctly. His 2000-rated opponent capitalised on the weakness, got the rooks off and pushed a passed pawn that Steve's king was too far away to catch. 3-3

A solid start to the season then, with the points shared and plenty of interesting games to get us in the classical chess mindset again after a summer of blitz tournaments. It's likely that we'll need to edge an extra half point from North Bristol in the return leg and make sure we give South Bristol a good showing if we want to retain our trophy, but based on the standard of chess played this week I think we have every chance of achieving that.