Now I was paired against Niall Doran, a 154-graded player. This is much more indicative of his playing strength than his FIDE rating of 1611, and indeed I found myself in the curious situation of comfortably out-rating him yet being similarly comfortably out-graded. This time I couldn't prepare, but we got into another highly theoretical line where this did not matter: again, it was one I don't face very often (in general, players of my approximate strength have an aversion to most, if not all, opening theory) and after attaining the better of the opening, I lost my way and with it the game, despite a very long struggle that was the last game of the round to finish.
0/2 after the first two rounds... I could see this tournament going the same way as my last e2e4 effort, but I now picked up and was unbeaten until the final round of the tournament. This game is in some ways similar to my first; against a stronger opponent, I had a good opening, made a material gain, but quickly went wrong when put under pressure and instantly went from winning to losing. This struggle was much longer though, as I maintain I had some practical drawing chances in the ending.
No comments:
Post a Comment