Our A team had the luxury to be at full strength against Grendel A, so arrived at Horfield's venue in a confident mood.

Grendel, however, notched up the first points of the night when Carl Bicknell got the better of Steve with the Black pieces in the Bishops Opening.

No need to panic though, as the bottom two boards seemed to be swinging in our favour. Martin went one pawn and then two pawns to the good and Peter was, in his words, suffocating his opponent whilst delivering a devastating king side attack. Nigel had gone a pawn up against Jerry's Grunfeld and was consolidating his position. Meanwhile, Aron was in for the long haul and had created a pawn structure that left Patrick with a bad dark squared bishop and a defensive position.

On board two. Oscar seemed to have a dark square bind with advanced pawns. As both players neglected to castle, a draw was not likely to be on the cards. After a quite peculiar-looking opening, Oscar was slipping into serious time trouble but was breaking
through on the Queenside.

Then came three consecutive wins. Martin levelled up the match after the pieces came off and the two extra pawns told. Jerry, having also gone two pawns down was banking on his isolated advanced b pawn which was slowly rounded up, forcing resignation. And Peter found a mate in two on the weak f7 square. The match was turned around at 3-1.

Oscar, with very little time, gave up both rooks for his opponent's Queen and infiltrated with Queen and Knight to deliver mate to win us the match 4-1. This game must be a candidate for the Mike Wood Attacking Game of the Season.

Those that remained witnessed Aron piling on the pressure as Patrick valiantly defended a difficult position with his clock dropping under a minute. A pawn finally dropped for Patrick caused by a nasty 'c' file pin and he tried to recover his position with captures which left him material down in a resignable position on move 63.

It seems that Grendel's Mother had stayed at the Eastfield and was not on hand to provide moral support and prevent us from achieving a highly creditable 5-1 win.