We were happy to be at full strength for what could be a banana skin against Thornbury.

Fortunately we started with a couple of wins - one comfortable and one more exciting. Tom"s was the comfortable one, as he was winning a piece against Justin by move 7 and converted calmly to force resignation twenty odd moves later.

Steve"s effort was very entertaining with a pawn sacrifice to allow time for an h pawn thrust to open the file. This was followed up by Rxh7 and the rook could not be captured by Mike without allowing the White Queen into the game with at least a perpetual check. The critical moment came a few moves later when Mike made the wrong choice in capturing the rook and emerged a pawn down with his King right in the open rather than a whole rook up. A tactic to win the Black Queen forced resignation a little later. A little lucky on that one, still fortune favours the brave!

Peter seemed to have equalised OK with Black against Lynda and by move 29 had a small advantage. He attempted to enlarge it by grabbing a loose pawn but in fact the White pieces now held the slight advantage.

Meanwhile Dave was OK with Black against Ian for a dozen moves before he underestimated the strength of a Bxh7 "sacrifice" which left him with a very much inferior game and dwindling time. There was a moment when he could have completely turned the tables but unfortunately didn't have enough time to see it and drifted into a losing endgame. He was more than a little surprised when his resignation was met with a round of acclamation by the opposition, something he says he has never encountered before in his long history of playing league chess!

So with the score now at 2-1, everything depended on Peter not losing. The game went to 65 moves before they were left with just a knight each but it is probably fair to say that Lynda missed more winning chances than Peter as they both ran down their clocks. It had been a tricky ending, first with Q + N each and later with just the knight and it's much easier to spot the best moves with hindsight and the use of a computer.

So we were highly satisfied in the end to come away with both points in a match in which at least three of the games could have gone either way.