This was the last match to be played at the cricket club. Next week we begin our time at The Cross Hands with a Tuesday knockout final and, just to keep the level of confusion up, after that we will be playing on Wednesdays. In the last few years we've racked a fair few fixtures on this website so I went looking for a random statistic. After this match, Downend A vs Horfield A has a website score of 5+ 2= 5-, which is nicely balanced. On the other hand, it turns out Downend A hasn't hosted Horfield A and won since 11th February 2014! Even though Horfield A could only muster 5 players, it turns out the odds were stacked against us.

With Andrew unavailable, Ian stepped up at the last minute, only to step down again when Derek announced they were only bringing 5 players to keep it a fair fight. Unfortunately, I saw little of the games this week, mostly because I saw very little in my own game and was scrabbling to not immediately lose most of the evening.

Richard and Derek looked to have started by locking horns in the centre and expanding on opposite sides. This marched on to a double rook ending with opposite coloured bishops and, after a clever move ordering, Richard emerged a-pawn up. Both sides swapped a pair of rooks and blockaded an opponent's passed pawn. Oscar started very strongly with some queenside expansion though Dominic managed to get black back into the game. Nigel and Phil played good solid stuff, demonstrating the sort of opening, early midgame and race to offer a draw (I think Phil got there first) that summarises evening league chess best.

I had recklessly sacrificed my own king safety in order to consider taking a loose h-pawn. Unaware of how precarious my king's position was, I continued ignoring the signs until I was compelled to sacrifice an exchange to prevent mate.

Gods I was wrong then.

Dominique attempted a very bold piece sacrifice in order to gain control over some key central squares and expose the white king. It was an interesting plan and would have been very strong, except that it didn't quite work. Harvey found an excellent defence and was able to not only repel the ominous attack but also generate one of his own. The game ended with a lovely queen sacrifice straight out of a tactics puzzle.

Although I generated some mess in the endgame, repeated blunders kept giving away any compensation (real or imagined) and Mike was able to finally wrest the points from the board. Oscar's endgame was scrappy, and it was hard to decide who actually had enough to take the lead. With time running low for both, a black repetition of threats was enough to split the point. Although things looked good for Richard, who was now in need of the full point, time was getting low and Derek was able to threaten to force a 'perpetual' on the black bishop which couldn't find a safe square to sit thanks to the threat of an exchange sacrifice that would promote a-pawn.

At least someone found it amusing.

A narrow loss for us, but an impressive achievement for the 5-player Horfield A. Maybe our new venue will give us better luck.