The drawing margin in chess

 Last night, I was playing for the Wallington 1st-team in the Croydon League for the first time, on board 4 of 4. We were against the CCF B-team; I am a limited member there, and our board 1 used to be their club champion a couple of decades ago, so definitely a night for the mercenaries!

 I was playing Ian Pratley, a 122 with whom I drew in the final round of CCF's summer international event last year. He has a reputation for being rather solid, but said after the game that he's tried to shake it off recently. Nonetheless, as he noted ruefully, in this encounter he never got the chance - but for me, that came at a cost. Yes, it's another gambit game!

 I cannot be especially proud of my play in this game. OK, so I gave my opponent an interesting opening as usual, but from a tactical perspective I was misfiring badly, overlooking a way to gain more than just compensation for the pawn (7... Nxh2!) and being saved the ignominy of losing a piece (after 11... Nf2??) only by that all-too-human flaw of the automatic recapture reflex. To compound problems, I got into terrible time trouble such that I abandoned notation up to the time control for the first time ever. Spending 20 minutes over my 11th-move blunder surely did not help matters!

 Yet I did get a draw! The team result (172-169; 160-138; 142-131; 144-122 - WWDD) was a solid 3-1 victory, and this might have prompted him to not push for victory as hard as he might have done, but it remains the case that black can in fact hold the balance in the final position with some ease - his two Bishops ought to be the superior of the white Knights, but more importantly, white's doubled d-pawns make it impossible for him to create a passed pawn, and so realising the extra (half-)pawn that he has isn't so feasible. Houdini's evaluation of the final position is, indeed 0.00. That I can play pretty weakly with black against someone who played rather well with white (notwithstanding the tactics we both missed), and be a pawn down for the entire game, is testament to the wide drawing margin in chess which my school top-board so often refers to.