Luckily we managed to find a Greggs on the main road outside the hotel which was open on Sunday mornings, and together with an Internet connection courtesy of Richard's phone we did prep over breakfast in the hotel room before moving up to the venue. Cambridge Uni were slightly different from their previous day's team, losing Alistair Hill but gaining two fairly decent players.

With everyone understanding exactly what they were supposed to be doing we moved smoothly into a decent position in the match. Chris noticed that Rohan played a system of the French he had never played before, so duly played a response he had also never played. David's game progressed smoothly from the start and Aitor looked like gaining a good opening.

A full 8 boards evades Jerry once again.

Soon Charlie made a piece sac that had his opponent in disarray, and came out with Q+2 for both Rooks, but with a strong initiative and was clearly better. Aitor won his game with a mating attack as did David giving us two early points and soon after both Daniel and Henry were given draws in positions that had tremendous amounts of play. Although neither looked worse it seemed dubious from their opponents' point of view not to try for a win but in any case it put us 3-1 up.

Max had a tough game and jettisoned the exchange for a-pawn; it was not really clear if he could have improved in the endgame though he did manage to get his king into a very active position. In the end he could not quite make it work but then Chris broke through with a-pawn break followed by a mating Rook sacrifice, and when Rich drew the match was in the bag.

Charlie won the exchange leaving him with Q v R+N but tried to complete the victory with a flourish by transposing into a Pawn ending which duly became Q+P v Q+P. Although he tried very hard to win, Shredder later confirmed that the ending was a draw as Black had a timely sacrifice to convert Charlie's remaining-pawn to a Rook's pawn. So we finished 5-3, way at the top end of expectations for the weekend.

Richard (Richard's game) and Henry were among the seven undefeated players this weekend!

So great celebrations and now looking forward to winning one more of the next three to make our way into the promotion pool.