The French Connection - Part Two

For the second installment in my brace of French Defence victories, I was playing for Castles in the CCF league. We were the only team on a 100% score going in; we were missing our board 2 and they were without their strongest player. So on board 1 I was paired against Gordon Morse, a 125. The overall match was 129-125, 119-103, 72-95, 66-89. From that, one can tell that I could do with a win. I was told by a friend before the match that he plays very solid chess; I expected a Caro-Kann, but a French wasn't a great surprise when it appeared. I think his choice of the McCutcheon was because it's obscure and that I mightn't know it. If so, he was sorely disappointed and I scored this cute miniature:

I hope you liked the finish as much as I did! This was certainly a caveman's game of chess, but if you can look at the position for black after 17. Ng5 and not feel even slightly concerned then I admire your courage. And most importantly, we won by a perhaps flattering but definitely useful score of 3-1 (WDWD). We can see daylight to second place! But 3 matches still remain, so complacency would be very dangerous.

Also, I would like to mention the value of a positive mindset. I am a terribly pessimistic player; I can head into a variation quite happily (correctly or not), but more often than not I find something to get really grumpy about once it actually appears on the board. Yet this game was different. Maybe it's because it was suggested to me that my opponent would play solidly (ie: he was scared of me. A novel thought!), maybe because of the small ego boost of playing on board 1, maybe because at this early stage in the grading season I'm performing at about 170 and my opponent is graded 125, maybe because it was a French Defence. Who knows? But I was for once confident of victory going in, liked my position throughout the game (the computer is more apprehensive of my positional weaknesses and thinks it's usually equal, but practical play favours the attacker) and followed that through to a quick win. Perhaps I should try it more often.