| Home Team: Bedford A | Away Team: Milton Keynes B | ||||||
| Board | Name | Grade | Score | Score | Name | Grade | |
| 1 | Mindaugas Beinoras | 231 | 1 | 0 | Richard CP Freeman | 171 | |
| 2 | Michael T Botteley | 186 | 0 | 1 | Phillip Ekhaesomi | 164 | |
| 3 | Raymon Gompelman | 168 | 0 | 1 | Francesca Matta | 166 | |
| 4 | Nicholas P Collacott | 170 | 0 | 1 | Ray Holland | 149 | |
| 5 | Richard T Bodily | 168 | 0.5 | 0.5 | Colin Solloway | 141 | |
| 1.5 | 3.5 | ||||||
| Played: 04/05/17 | |||||||
Milton Keynes B tore the heart out of the Bedford A team, enabling Milton Keynes A, simultaneously conquering Bedford B, to edge Bedford A into a final third place in the league on game points, 30 to 28.
On a bad night for the home team Richard Bodily finished first after pieces got swapped and he had the slight disadvantage of an isolated d pawn when the draw was agreed. Raymon lost a piece for no compensation and although Mike seemed to have a strong attack, Nick’s game was drifting downhill. Then Mike missed the best continuation and lost to a counter-attack. Nick’s own counter-attack at one point looked threatening but eventually wasn’t enough. So at 0.5-3.5 down the only interest was to watch the endgame technique of IM Beinoras (see game).
Even with Steve Ledger unavailable and Paul Habershon, on a run of bad form, electing to be non-playing captain in the interests of squad rotation, this was a match we were favourites to win. Perhaps the most apposite quote of the evening was Mike Botteley’s: ‘I might as well have been playing dominoes.’