The C team welcomed Cabot A and we were pleased to see some old faces here again for the first time in nearly two years.

I was the first to finish. Alastair tried to tempt me into a gambit pawn but I wasn't interested and played a new line (for me, anyway) which ended up meaning that I was the one giving up a pawn for what I hoped was better piece play. It turned out that I was able to molest his Queen into repeating moves a couple of times and, having got the feeling that our top two had promising looking games, I enquired if he would like to go for a third. The answer was yes.

The most clear cut of the other three games was Peter's. He more than equalised against Alan, gaining pressure down the c file and then, after a quite long-winded manoeuvre of his Queen's knight from a6 via c7, e8 and f6 to g4 was able to unleash a bishop skewer from h6 towards Q on d2 and R on c1, while maintaining serious threats against f2. It was really all over by move 23, although Alan gamely struggled on for another dozen moves but the c file told in the end.

Steve's and Grant's games were much harder to fathom but for entirely different reasons. Steve had opened up Juan's King side dangerously at the cost of being under threat of choking by an advanced central pawn. Grant, on the other hand, had his own monster pawn on the sixth rank supported by his bishop, which had been part of the deal for going the exchange down.

It was always on the cards that Eddie would find a way to give the exchange back while liquidating the danger pawn and, when this happened, unfortunately for Grant, it was the remaining White rook which was more active and penetrated to the seventh rank, where it was able to pose enough threats to ensure a winning ending.

This meant that the match result now depended on whether Steve's enterprising play would pay off. He was still restricted by that advanced pawn but had open files for his rooks with possibilities to double them on the seventh or eighth ranks but at the cost of a Queen invasion by Black which might spoil the party. In fact it certainly should have but for some inexplicable reason (perhaps it was the clock) Juan missed the fairly simple win of a rook and two moves later put his Queen en prise.

A very welcome and, in some ways, very lucky result meant two more points kept the C team well in contention for the Division Two title at the halfway stage.