Two teams near the top of the table played off at the Colosseum and, with three ungraded players in the ranks, it was hard to assess who might be favourites.

Tom was first to finish. Stuart took some serious liberties with his Q side and ended up minus his QR for precious little compensation except that Tom's KB had left home. But Tom was a trifle slow in plugging the entrance down the long diagonal and the f3 square soon had a welcome sign on it, which was duly accepted by a knight. It was all over by move 20 with a neat perpetual check.

I was trying to play aggressively and ventured a line that I shall certainly consign to the bin next time but fortunately for me Eddie didn't spot the flaw. He had a definite edge when he tried to castle but moved the rook first; Rf1 still left him narrowly ahead. After that I managed to win a couple of pawns and then the exchange but at the cost of using up much more time. As we were not using increments there was always the danger of overstepping the time limit.

Meanwhile Grant gained a peculiar positional advantage by forcing trebled isolated c pawns on Michael, although opposite coloured bishops meant there could well be drawing possibilities. As the middle game morphed into an ending Grant's bishop held everything together while his rook roamed the board picking up loose pawns. By the time the rooks came off Michael's bishop had no chance of restraining Grant's 5-2 pawn majority. One up!

Then I managed to win another minor piece and so, a whole rook up now, I was able to swap everything off except the odd extra pawn and they tell me I had all of 40 seconds left when I promoted and mated him.

Steve had been proactively pushing David's minor pieces around with pawn thrusts. But one pawn dropped off and then another and from there it was always a downhill struggle with time running lower. Steve battled gamely for 50 moves before the inevitable.

After the previous round's disappointing visit to South Bristol it was quite a relief to get back to winning ways, however narrow the margin. In all honesty we won this one despite not finding consistently good moves. But, as the managers say on Match of the Day, we don't really mind where the points come from!