In a night of blunders, including a default, the A-Team suffered another defeat against Badgers Brook in the Edinburgh premier league.

After a muddle over who was driving whom, Neil Fleming was left standing outside the Polish club waiting for a lift that had already merrily departed. Upon arrival at the venue and hearing team captain Elliot's query "And where's Neil?", driver Mark realised he'd blundered but didn't yet know this was only the first of the night.

On top board Nicol (white) outplayed another opponent in a longish ending as he seems to do on a regular basis.

On board 2 Mark had his opponent in a seemingly helpless position but compounded his earlier mistake by blundering a whole rook. Luckily, he had a passed pawn in compensation and this was enough to get back the rook, leaving our hero two pawns up. However, just as he was about to queen a pawn his flag fell (disaster number 3 😲). The rule is that you lose on time if your opponent can give mate with his remaining material, otherwise it's a draw. In this case the opponent only had a knight but it was still possible to construct a mate, highly contrived though it was. Despite being in a position to claim a win, Kenny McGeoch sportingly offered a draw, which was gratefully accepted.

Elliot got behind in development and succumbed to pressure on his king side. Donald played the wrong rook to the centre. Richard blundered his queen to a knight fork.

A sad, sad night, but hey, it's only a game.