The auguries were not great for the Final that we had been looking forward to in order to win some silverware in an otherwise disappointing season! Thanks to holidays and GCSEs we were without Oscar, Nigel and James. Still, we were delighted that Tom was able to make himself available again after his giant killing against Clifton B, that Aldrin could come out of semi-retirement and that Alexis could fill the remaining gap again. Indeed, we were also very grateful to Steve for delaying his planned period away from the game until after this match.

Clifton’s team, not surprisingly, was based on their B team which had just won the league. It meant there was no Cobb, Bicknell, Curtis or Collier, so the teams were fairly evenly matched, although Clifton still had an average rating advantage in excess of 100.

There were interesting happenings on the top table. First Oli opened e4 and found himself in a Sicilian! Then Steve grabbed a pawn, which led to an interesting position where he had a protected passed pawn on f7. Evidently there was enough in the position for them to agree a draw and they soon tootled off to the bar to analyse it, leaving Haroon and Oli in for the long haul.

Some more draws followed. Mark was plus 23 in his game with Zack but struggled with the shorter junior time control and let the win slip away. Peter tells us that Chris refused to go over his game afterwards as he considered his opening an affront to chess! So nothing new there, then. In fact Peter had given up a pawn or two for very active play, doubling on the seventh. It allowed Gareth a promising piece sacrifice but Peter had seen that it only led to perpetual check.

So it was 1½-1½ each at this stage and over to the bottom three boards. Tom played Colin for the second time in three weeks but this time with the disadvantage of the White pieces and he drifted into a difficult middle game, shed a pawn and eventually lost. Meanwhile the Malibirans were having great fun on the bottom table. In Aldrin’s case it was “blink and you’ll miss it” because after building a dominating position against Duncan, he was suddenly absent from the board having found a quick finish. Alexis made all the play against Robert and looked like increasing our lead but Aldrin tells us that he missed a winning move which was a pity after such enterprising play and unfortunately he went on to lose.

Which meant we were 2½-3½ down with just Haroon’s and Reinhold’s games to finish. Overall it still looked promising as long as Reinhold could avoid losing to Michael because Haroon had built a dangerous initiative, a pawn up (which became passed on a3), with probing rooks and not really a sniff of counter-play. Reinhold had a very tricky and time consuming middle game with B + N versus two bishops. Eventually it came down to a rook each and level pawns.

When Haroon pushed his pawn to a2, Oli found his rook could not both prevent promotion and save his bishop, so he gave up the bishop, won the a pawn and went for tricky threats with his rooks on the seventh rank. Haroon was able to hold the f7 square and use his extra piece to open up the position around Oli’s King to clinch the point and leave the score tied at 3½-3½.

Fortunately Reinhold’s board was right in the middle of the room so a dozen souls were able to watch the denouement. It was not a pretty sight for those who could see the clock because they both went agonizingly close to losing on time, only to regain precious seconds on the increment. It was reminiscent of Martin White’s famous draw in the Final at Bath all those years ago! In fact Reinhold won a pawn but carried on oblivious to the match situation until he finally asked what the score was, after which he immediately offered Michael a draw, which he could hardly refuse.

So we had won on board count, to bring our recent successes in the Knockout to seven out of the last eight contests. Very well done to the team! A great fight had been put up by both sides and thanks to Dave for supplying photos on WhatsApp, although perhaps he should feel a bit guilty for that remark about extracting a win from a dentist!