The 28th November match, Crystal Palace vs. Castles, was one of the more one-sided I have played for grades: we were numerically up against it; 177-201, 150-186, 144-176, 129-169, 119-159, 115-158, 66-145, 71-134. In the end, we went down 0.5-7.5, salvaging an honourable draw on board one. In any case, before the game I could tell that not much rode on this game.
After 1. e4, I usually bang out 1... c5 without much thought. Yet on this occasion, I was overtaken by an urge to play the Caro-Kann Defence, 1... c6. I do this every so often, with variable results. Here, it worked very well; the Fantasy Variation (3. f3!?) is becoming more popular but doesn't seem to promise white much, and so I comfortably equalised against this 169 opponent. As so often however, I contrived to snatch defeat from the jaws of parity, and made one tactical blunder which was leapt on.
Suffice it to say that I was less than pleased after this game. For a supposedly good tactician, it's simply unacceptable to not appreciate the consequences of 34... Nf4??, especially as the position had forced me to analyse a Rook check on the back rank for the last few moves - even on this move, in fact!
I am not sure if my demoralisation is the cause of recent poor results, or the tactical mistakes, or if demoralisation is causing the tactical mistakes. In any case, the proposed cure of Jeremy Silman doesn't seem to be working right now - see the game that follows - but I am at least not being blown off the board in this game.
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