Exertion unrewarded

This evening I was playing on my habitual board 3 for the Sutton Grammar 1st-team, in a match against our local rivals Wilson's, champions of Surrey for the last 2 seasons. Both schools have seen chess flourish in the last few years thanks to dedicated teachers, with the result that we have many boards playing simultaneously. Tonight's tally of 36 was the highest we have managed so far.

Naturally my primary concern was for the first 6 boards, as I am captain of this team. We expected and got a tough opposition team, which outgraded us, board-by-board, 195-192, 171-143, 184-129, 165-125, 150-133, 128-114. I was particularly outgraded, a massive 55 points down against Aditya Gupta, a club-mate at Castles who it is impossible to dislike. Still, once again I had prepared, and I had nothing to lose. I was looking forward to the game...:

 The better player won in the end, but I was disappointed to lose this game after such a close contest against a 184. That said, I am happy with the standard to which I played. It is a shame I could not record the final moves in a time scramble as this detracts from the informative value of the flash viewer above; by the point at which I stopped we had about 3 minutes each left. I don't play 1... e5 very often at all  (hence my willingness to give away all my preparation for the game!) but I was happy with the opening. Now it is time to try and convert promising openings against 170+ opponents into points...