Broadstairs 1½ Bridge B 5½
| 1 | David Faldon (170) | 0-1 | Richard Eales (201) |
| 2 | Bob Page (141) | 1-0 | Alan Atkinson (182) |
| 3 | Paul Carfrae (132) | 0-1 | Mark Mortimer (159) |
| 4 | John Couzens (131) | 0-1 | Shany Rezvany (157) |
| 5 | Andy Flood (e114) | 0-1 | James Essinger (155) |
| 6 | David Wheatley (106) | 0-1 | Patrick Burns (e137) |
| 7 | Reg Pidduck (104) | ½-½ | Shahid Sahi (107) |
David Faldon writes:
Let’s look on the bright side. We improved on our first meeting with Bridge (1-6) and Bob won a splendid game on Board 2 against a very strong opponent. Bob (white) played the King’s Gambit and soon achieved a promising position, winning a pawn. His opponent did get a passed pawn in compensation, but Bob managed to block it. At some point it looked like a draw might result, but black tried a bit too hard to remove the blockade and Bob spotted a chance to get both of his rooks onto the seventh rank with a crushing attack. The other half point came on Board 7 when Reg also won a pawn but at the cost of a totally sterile position. Reg had eight pawns and a bishop all on white squares while his opponent had seven pawns and a bishop all on dark squares. At the end Reg (or his opponent) could have played 20 moves in a row and still not been able to make progress. Of the other games, we had some winning chances on Boards 1 and 6 but in both cases the Bridge players came up with clever defensive ideas to spoil the fun, while on Board 4 John got in his characteristic sacrifice on f7 but this time it didn’t do him any good. All in all a bit of a disappointing final score that didn’t reflect all the effort we put in against a side that outgraded us by 30 points on average. None of the games was completely one-sided and everyone can take heart that we still have two more chances to beat Bridge this season!