The next games come from the 98th Richmond Rapidplay, in which I entered the U-170 section. I am only graded 138 for rapid chess, but I was still seeded about mid-way through the field due to lots of juniors playing up a section (the next lowest being U-135). Eventually, I managed to score 2.5/6, which is my best score in this section, but I think the tournament was overall disappointing, as I rather ran out of steam in the second half of the tournament.
In any case, it started brightly enough when I was somehow able to save a draw in the below game against the 167-graded Mark Littleton. Our previous game, at RR97, had seen him try the Icelandic Gambit, which went horribly wrong for him but I still managed to lose, for my greatest talent is choking in winning positions against much higher-rated players. The reason for his victory, I reasoned, was that he had blundered a pawn for no compensation on move 3 - my best approach must be to get in my pawn blunder first this time! And so...
Despite the good result, we should not ignore the fact that I played the opening awfully, making major errors on moves 9 and 15, plus dubious mistakes on moves 14 and... well, 2. On the bright side, I made up for this with a strong defensive game after 17... Qxh2+ and some heart-in-mouth moves. Whatever one thinks about this game, I must have been happy with it at the time for 3 of my next 4 games with white were gambits...
Coming next will be another blunderous game, where I somehow manage to throw away a highly drawish ending with a ridiculously obvious oversight. I somehow kept up a slow trickle of points, but my play left a lot to be desired once fed into the computer.
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