As I mentioned previously, the first of the four was in the Bristol League, and every captain's favourite match of the season - the last one. We were at home against Clevedon, and since we managed to get a full contingent in the end, the only way we could lose our hold of third in the table was if we lost 0-6 and Clifton B won their final fixture 6-0. A remote possibility of course, but you never know.
On paper it's hard to understand how Clevedon hold their own in Division 1, but they seem to outperform their grades rather often and came within a whisker of winning the knockout competition a few days later against a much stronger team. Our own team for this match was eccentric, starting out very strong and then rapidly dwindling: 212-158, 197-170, 185-171, 156-162, 160-157, 132-U. Still, the balance of probability was surely on our side.
Since I couldn't really justify going above our board 3 or below our board 5, I was forced to go on 4 and take yet another white. I know the reader is probably not sold on that explanation but it really was starting to become embarrassing by this stage in the season! But since I was almost always black in the first half, overall my split was not too bad (9-6). I was playing Jonathan Wood (162) and it must be said the game does have a slight end-of-term look about it. A short but interesting draw, that I will primarily use as a theoretical survey, since I was surprised in the opening:
Our final match ended in a 4.5-1.5 victory (WDWDDW) though it might have been closer; our top board was extremely fortunate to avoid a shock loss (but as it is emerges with the best performance of anyone in the league), the game on board 3 was typically messy, and we had to suffer for a long time on board 5. Despite the results, the performances on the even-numbered boards were somewhat smoother! So third place it was, and with more match/game points than in our runners-up campaign last time, not to mention two drawn matches rather than nine. Next year it will be harder for us, since rather too many players are leaving. But you can never tell who will arrive in the Autumn!
I've only faced the Armenian Variation once before, and since I was quite happy with that game (perhaps it doesn't look quite so good now, but still not bad) I never really bothered to learn the lines properly. I must admit that I am still not really sold on the idea of 5... Ba5 - preserving the dark-squared Bishop has some logic to it, but in that case why did black play ...Bb4 in the first place? Besides, in the critical line the offending piece just gets captured on a5 instead. I feel that white must be doing extremely well in the 8. bxa5 line. But if white doesn't know it, he doesn't know it! I think a big part of my better results with 1. e4 is that play tends to be a lot more direct, and this rewards thorough preparation - but on the other hand, you need to know more to get serviceable positions.
The version I got (after trying, as usual, to have my cake and eat it by playing both Qg4 and f4) could very easily have become difficult for white. Then again, it is telling that even this imprecise play never allowed black anything more than equality. In fact, if I had tried 15. Bb2 I could have kept on trying for something - and I would have rather liked a win to cap off a league season that has nevertheless been quite remarkable. Instead black was able to liquidate and hold rather comfortably - an opening success for him, I suppose.
A bit disappointing then, but no disaster. Only a couple of days later came the start of the elongated final 4NCL weekend of the season, in which I hoped to replicate my good results from February.
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