Thursday 4th February 2016
| Bedford D | Leighton Buzzard B | |||||
| 1 | 154 | Neil Hickman | 0 | 1 | Brian Valentine | 162 |
| 2 | 143 | John Harbour | 1 | 0 | Adrian Matthews | 158 |
| 3 | 171 | Ben Pike | 0 | 1 | Peter Taylor | 153 |
| 4 | e120 | Jan Laming | 0 | 1 | Fred Dorn | e125 |
| 5 | e110 | Blagan Jeremic | 1 | 0 | Tony Readman | 122 |
| 2 | 3 |
Blagan quickly built up a fierce attack and finished the game off in style.
The other games were on a slower burn. Neil’s French defense looked solid to my untrained eye; I maintained White’s God-given small edge in a Sicilian; Ben’s position began to look difficult; Jan built up a threatening attack.
Then it began to go wrong. Ben succumbed; All the pieces except the Qs came off in Neil’s game and he resigned a pawn down and about to lose more; Jan’s advanced pieces got in a tangle and he lost one of them. I found an unsound tactical idea which succeeded in converting a better position into a won ending.