B Team Deny Clifton A Away Win.

Horfield B 3-3 Clifton A

1.Krzyzanowski 0-1 Clobb, 2.Helbig 1/2-Morris , 3.Candelario 0-1 Grossett,Richards 1/2-1/2 Curtis 4.Attar 1-0 Collier, Radford 1-0 Doklestic

This was a match between second and the fourth placed teams in Division One separated by just one point. There was a lot at stake as both were trailing Bath a point ahead.

Horfield got off to a fast start as Bob won his game with Igor comfortably on board six. Bob came out of the opening the exchange and two pawns up. Igor fought on but could not prevent stopping three connected passed queenside pawns and resigned. Clifton bounced back as Duncan got the better of Matias on board 3. This was followed by James Cobb winning with the white pieces on top board against Patryk who was unable to prevent James from formulating a winning plan. On board 4 the two John’s never really took their game to the level of life or death as both probed each other’s position for weaknesses and both continued to make positional adjustments to secure an even position. However, neither were able to find a winning path and so a draw being the probable outcome was agreed. This now left two games remaining with Clifton 2.5-1.5 ahead and at this point Paul’s position was promising but difficult as he had managed to engineer Queen, Bishop and Rook plus four pawns against Gareth’s two rooks two Bishops and a Knight situation. Eventually Paul establish a perpetual check situation and pushed a passed a pawn which was removed with Blacks bishop. Having nothing more than a perpetual check the game was agreed a draw after repeated check moves.

The score was now 2-3 to Clifton .

We now had one game remaining and with Rob a pawn up in some games that would be considered enough except that David had a strong queenside attack threatening mate. However, Rob was holding that without problems, and even managed to swap a pair of rooks off taking away the only piece protecting David’s king, Alarm bells were ringing as David running out of time had moved his Queen off a mating attack square to push one of his strong passed pawns gained through a knight sacrifice whilst Rob made more inroads with neat maneuvering and had now created a serious threat with Queen and Rook ready to invade deep into Davids position with a definite mating threat. David with literally seconds left tried to get his King to a bolt square on the queenside but was unable to escape and Rob delivered mate in an extremely exciting game in which he recovered brilliantly. This win gave a 3-3 result which caused great relief to our players with Rob saving denying the reigning champions the victory.