After three rounds, I stood on 1/3. It's an interesting score for a tournament player: to be sure, the high boards already begin to look some way away, and indeed I got no higher than board 8 of 20 for the rest of the tournament, but get one win and you're straight back to an even score, from which anything can happen. There were rather worse pairings I could have ended up with, so I was hoping for a win in this game, against the 128-graded junior, Daniel Muir. I've played him before, and won the game. It was a morning game, so I could prepare - with a record of our previous meeting, confirmed by a game in the same line his father played the day before this game, doing so would be easy - or so I thought...
A draw that might well be termed a success for Muir, who was surely happy from the beginning with a draw. He has undoubtedly improved since we last played nearly a year ago; I did win on time as mentioned in the notes, but I had reached a clearly won position by that point. 3... dxe4 was a much better choice than his previous 3... Nc6, that I was able to steer to a much more interesting position. This time, he stood firm against my attempts to launch an attack, and rather easily rebuffed them. I on the other hand was more disappointed: I had wanted to win, yet felt compelled to acquiesce to a draw against a lower-rated player, with the white pieces, in a mere 23 moves.
I suppose this game leaves the ball in my court - how to gain an advantage from the opening against the Rubinstein French? Or rather, how can white make something out of the advantage that white can get without really trying?
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