We were paired against a much stronger team than yesterday, but received an unexpected bonus when Nigel's opponent did not turn up. It later transpired that he had thought it was a 1 o'clock start. So not only a point, but the penalty for an unannounced default is that the defaulting team has a point subtracted from their score. Perhaps helped by the lessening of pressure, our team started performing, albeit mostly in the draw direction. Mike and Henry were first to take the option, then Rich followed suit, and Phil and Chris turned round difficult positions. Both of those ended in draws too, leaving Max and Dave to try and win, in the comfortable situation of only needing half a point between them for the match.

Mike and Max feeling less pressure with Nigel's game leaving us ahead 2 points ahead

Dave had some complicated tactics but emerged a-pawn up in a R+P ending. He managed to convert it quite easily to nail the match. Max played a well thought out plan to win Jana Bellin's a-pawn, but a bad bishop hampered the win, and despite an ambitious attempt to lure her into a sacrifice they eventually agreed a draw.

David surprising no one by engaging in a complex game.

So a win with 6 draws and 1 win, against a team with 200s on the top five boards. No one left the weekend empty-handed except of course that Nigel would have preferred to play a game rather than travel up from Cheltenham for a default. This also puts us in the situation that we can still have a shot at a place in the promotion pool - we would need to win 3 matches in Rounds 3-7 for that to happen.

Chris analysing his position with a whiff of digust.

Also worth mentioning is that Dan helped Bristol University top board Sam Chow (representing South Wales Dragons) to prepare for his match against GM Richard Palliser, from which Sam gained a draw after nearly 6 hours play.