Hypermodern triumph becomes a rout

 This week has been a busy one for me chess-wise, for it is half-term at the moment - no schoolwork to worry about! Anyway, yesterday I was back at CCF, playing in their FIDE-rated 'Super League.' There wasn't much that was super about it however, as of the expected 16 games, only 9 were played; in the top division, one team's board 1 failed to turn up, whilst in my division, the bottom two boards of my match were defaulted by one or both teams, but the other match was conceded entirely. So it was an unusually quiet evening by their standards!

 My match was a pretty clear-cut one; our opponents were weakened badly, through illness and one of the ever-popular e2e4 International tournaments, and defaulted their bottom two boards. We conceded 4 too, making the grade line-up 163-110, 144-109, 82-Def, Def-Def. Or, since it's a FIDE event, 1888-1529, 1761-1528, 1395-Def, Def-Def. Either way, it's pretty clear we had a big grading plus, and it made itself manifest on both 'live' boards:

 It doesn't seem unreasonable that this was a dream game for a hypermodern player; although 7... Nh5 might have been inexact, white over-valued what could be done with the proferred space, and quickly lost a pawn and with it the centre. Her Queenside remained weak, and prompted the apocalyptic 16. Nd1?? (though I must sheepishly confess that I overlooked my reply when thinking over 15... Qb4). After that, a strategic grind became a monstrous attack on the King, which after a lengthy walk into enemy territory, was trapped in a mating net by move 30.

 One-sided though the game certainly became, my own play was not perfect - as I've said, 7... Nh5 was maybe not the best, played only because I overlooked the 8. Bd2 dxe5?! variation given in the notes, and sometimes, despite seeing most of the right moves, I did not play them in the optimum order - ie: ...Nxf3+/...Bf5, as well as ...Be2/...Be5+. From an even more pedantic viewpoint, I missed the quickest mate, but that would probably be going too far. Most glaring an issue was how slowly I played, especially as I didn't have anything particularly demanding to think about. White's torture was rather cruelly prolonged.

 Nonetheless, chess is a game played by humans, and so despite these flaws, ostensibly I won easily.