It is fair to say that our title defence hopes were already on the ropes after a disastrous October-November stretch where the A-team managed 2 points from 4 matches. A few good wins kept our faint hope alive until defeat at South Bristol finally meant I could focus on berating my teammates and not the title chances. With the pressure off, the A-team naturally went on to win 5 matches in row. A revenge win against Bath (who were undefeated against Downend & Fishponds this season) would be enough to push us to a respectable third place.
With Charlie and Henry unavailable Mike and Martin volunteered to fill in. I've missed the last 2 matches and feel I could be forgiven for assuming that it would either be Chris or Richard to take up the mantle of board 1. I was wrong. Captain Jerry was taking the board 1 bullet as black against Buckers. Maybe I shouldn't be forgiven for laughing.
The games started as we're often told they should. White seemed to be gaining at least a slight edge on every board. Jerry allowed a big space advantage and hunkered down to play solid defence. Chris and Matthew were charging down a complex sideline with both sides requiring accurate play. Rob had arrived a few minutes later than the rest but immediately launched a caveman attack at Richard involving bishops and Rf1-e1-e3-h3. Unfortunately for him, Richard's king wasn't on g8 yet. Board 4 was a complex positional game with Andrew taking more space on the queenside than was perhaps defensible which allowed Mike to invade with his pieces. I'm choosing to describe my game against Mark as an unexplored side-variation of the Dutch, rather than simply misplayed by me. I was lucky that my pieces were just about able to prevent an immediate central squash by white. David A had played a rather passive opening against Martin (since I noted Martin's predilection for Accelerated Dragons, they have only been notable by their absence - sort it out Martin!) perhaps hoping for some future play against White's (wordplay intended) IQP.
Richard decided that white's blunt attack could be countered by a blunt attack of his own. It was a position of batteries, following by an audacious queenside-castle where black faced a semi-open b-file. Chris' game appeared to have reached a level position where black's activity was compensation for an ugly pawn structure, but Chris rejected a draw offer. Mike had converted his positional plus to win an exchange though there was plenty of work still to be done. Martin had avoided a wild-looking (though inaccurate) opportunity to harass black's king and settled for a positional plus. My position had become more level and was becoming more complex with each move. Jerry was still weathering the storm.
This is a reference to Jerry's position and nothing else.
Having achieved a good advantage on the clock I spent around 20 minutes looking at a tactical sacrifice. I miscalculated and thought it wasn't sound, so played a different one instead. As such, I missed the turning points of a number of matches.
I'm sure it was fine chess.
Chris was still playing for "bits" and after some cheeky probing around Matthew's king, found himself with a very pretty tactical mating rook sacrifice (Edit: His game, along with some variations by Dave Tipper can be found here). Within minutes, Martin won exchange in the endgame and that settled that. The complications I had created somehow ended up favourably for me resulting in a rook and-pawn endgame where black had two extra passed-pawns.
With my game finished, and the match at 3-0 I went to assess the other positions. Mike's position looked very good with black nearly out of counter-play. Richard had entered an endgame with an extra pawn whose promotion would snag white's last rook. As for Jerry, well naturally he was up a-pawn in a winning endgame, with 5 minutes to David's 90 seconds.
Just as the whispers turned into talk of a 6-0 win, Andrew uncorked a specular mate in 3 swindle. Though very unfortunate for Mike, it was a well-played strike by Andrew. David stirred up complications as best he could given the position and Jerry offered a draw which was quickly accepted. Richard's pawn had to be snaffled for the rook and that ended the match.
They say that third place tends to be happier than second though we'll have to ask South Bristol about that. After the start of the season the A-team put out, I think third is still a great accomplishment. Next season, we'll simply have to find our form quicker! With 6 wins on the trot to finish the season maybe it's time to start talking about our title hopes again.
On a side-note, the score prediction league for Division 1 is now finished and the winner is our very own Richard Savory! Prizes will be distributed as soon as possible. I'm sure there'll be another next season, so get in touch if you want to take part!