The wrong approach?

 Everybody knows that turnout for University teams is like life's proverbial box of chocolates. If we were stuck with our South Bristol team for the remaining matches, we would surely be doomed, but thankfully it improved a lot for our next match, against Clifton A. This was on the 17th March, so I am back within a month's lag - although I still have plenty of games left to cover!

 Once seemingly invincible, our opponents are now - without any change in personnel - just another strong side. Empires rise and fall, so what chance has a chess team got? They've suffered some curious defeats in the last couple of seasons, and none more so than the week before this match when they were edged out by Horfield B - a result we were certainly not happy to see. All we could do was try to match that, and for once we had most of our top players out - I was quietly optimistic that we could get something despite still being outgraded, perhaps the surest sign of how far Clifton have fallen - in the past you just discounted the two matches against them. Still, it would not be easy: 212f-224, 193-181, 164-186, 147-174, 159-164, 152f-159.

 I was down in the depths on board 3 this time, where I faced fellow draw-master John Curtis (186). His favourite Philidor Defence is solid but stodgy - black can't win if white doesn't take any risks. It looked a touch vulnerable, and since the match was key for us I took a lot of time preparing - but that's no help if you forget your pre-game work! It only takes one slip for white's advantage to disappear, but there were still some interesting moments in the margins of another disappointingly short draw:

 Although we robbed them of a whole point in the blitz finishes to get to 3-3 (DWDLWL), you're always left wondering what might have been with drawn matches. It's not yet clear if we will regret not taking some chances elsewhere, including on my board. Perhaps my approach to our relegation dilemma is mistaken: I seem to be approaching it from the position that losing games (especially with white) would be catastrophic when our survival chances are so finely balanced, and so taking risks in search of victory cannot be justified. But maybe we are getting to the point where draws are no longer any better than going down in flames: as it is, we are effectively playing 5-board matches with an extra black and one of our best players out of the equation.

 A reader has recently rumbled my strategy of compensating for the lack of excitement in the games with fascinating but ultimately irrelevant variations in the notes. I'm afraid I've been at it again here, but what can you do? Sometimes chess is dull. My research for this post has raised 5. g4!? in my estimations, but I get the impression it is best saved for faster time controls. Curtis was in book for most of the game as well, so I have no doubt that he would indeed have known what he was doing. 15. Qe3?! was a more problematic lapse: who among us would play this move if they were given the position cold without any sort of preparation beforehand? There can be a dark side if your memory is misfiring, although I suppose that at this stage of my degree I can be forgiven for having enough other things on my mind.

 Nevertheless, a draw with Clifton A is still a good result, although perhaps we needed something more - even as I type, with plenty more results having come in, it's impossible to predict which way things are going to go. Our next match was another challenge, but another one that we dared to dream about - at home against title favourites Downend.