It is early in the season to be mentioning relegation, but it is logical to anticipate that one of the second teams in Division One may well go down at the end.

That means the October 24th home match against Horsham 2 carried great significance. The win was a good team effort with no-one in trouble early on, and when the visitors gained the better of it on two boards, the defences held, while there was already a point in the bag from board four.

Howard had to cede the initiative early but no clear breakthrough could be spotted in the post-mortem.

Alan pushed hard to exploit a pin on a Nd7 by Qa4, but Black maintained equality. Toby had an early initiative when his opponent fell into a trap. Two knights at f5 and d5 were guarded only by a Pe4 and this overload meant that Black finally got two advanced passed pawns. One of these promoted to a knight with check in a pulsating finish, though White was too short of time to spot a defensive resource.

My game was the first to finish. Black played an ambitious …b7-b5 hitting a Nc4, but was rocked back by Qd1-f3 intensifying pressure from a Bg2. White could have won a pawn at a couple of stages, but preferred to maintain pressure. Black resigned at move 30 when two pawns down with his king in a possible mating net. I hope to demonstrate the game in my talk next Thursday.

Brendan was faced with a passed enemy pawn on the h-file, but his opponent took the draw when short of time. Full details on the new LMS scorecard section of the League web site. A curious feature was the fact that two of the visitors had made the long journey to Hastings only two days before for a Division 2 match that Horsham also lost

B.Cafferty