With hindsight, it would appear that the Wallington 2 team for which I played last week set out to crack a nut with a sledgehammer. Perhaps due to home advantage, we were up on grades (in this U-145 competition) 140-123, 144-116, 139-94, 129-85, 127-80, 104-68. Nonetheless, such matches do not win themselves, and so I played the 85-graded Robert Frost. Usually, it is white who dictates what kind of battle a particular game will be, and so it was here, as I was led into a slow, positional war of manouevring. Despite this setback, I was not to be denied:
Ultimately, we did enough to win 4.5-1.5 (WLWWDW), but I shall focus on my own game. I did win a pawn very quickly, after 5. Bd2?, however it seems I switched off, letting my paranoia of losing fianchetto Bishops make me take only the pawn and not the exchange on top, before allowing him full compensation for that pawn down the b-file. We both missed simple tactics (21. Rxc6!; 23. Rxa6!; 30... Nd7!), and I overestimated the ease with which pawn-up endgames could be converted, especially with his excellent b6 Rook.
That scathing critique I know now. In the immediate aftermath of the game, I was quite satisfied; I thought I had played a nice, simple positional game, and slowly ground my opponent down with superior endgame technique. You never hear me say any of those things normally, so I thought that getting Nimzowitsch's legendary "My System" as a Christmas present was having an immediate impact! Sadly not, it would seem, but let this game be a lesson to all stodgy positional players out there that tactics lurk in even the most innocent of positions...
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