Tonight the University of Bristol had it's varsity match against the University of the West of England! Unfortunately, due to league grading restrictions, the top 8 players for Bristol couldn't play. I was the highest graded player that was allowed simply because I'm registered for that team. Our highest proper B-team player was called away leaving us with a weakened team.
On the other hand, given that we were playing UWE's top team, they had their strongest players on board. The downside for them was that they only had 3 players available at the time, so we went into the match 1-0 up. That was a small comfort, but I was a little apprehensive playing against someone reasonably higher rated than me (and also the highest rated player I've played in a slow game). So here goes!
Yay! Another swindle for the books, I think! To wrap up the story our board 2 won very quickly although perhaps with more moves than in the above game and our board 3 won with a very nice knight sacrifice to promote a pawn. All in all, 4-0 to us! Whoo!
Right. I'm off to book up on the Scandinavian and the Panov-Botvinnik Attack! Feel free to leave a comment full of praise and adoration.