Is this just Fantasy?

 The game presented here is my game on board 11 for the Surrey U-160 team at home to Kent on the Saturday just gone. I played it in rather strange circumstances - prodigious quantities of snow were forecast for Southern England, to start at about 6pm, supposedly likely to disable much of the transport network. This game started at about 2pm, getting to the venue takes 20-30 minutes, and it is a 4-and-a-half hour playing session...  But that was a problem for a few hours later - I was paired with Bob Lane, a 153.

 For sure, I've had some interesting and sharp games of late, but the openings involved have surely helped - since the South England U-18, my games have included the Scotch Game as well as King's, Benko and Smith-Morra Gambits. When I was confronted by a Caro-Kann Defence, things threatened to be different. In the past, I have had many county games where the opponent has played a London-esque 1. d4 opening and tried to bore me to sleep and an easy win on time. I wondered at first if Lane might be from that school, but to his credit, after a lethargic start to the game, he fully played his part in the game, as well as its hectic conclusion, that allowed me to have things wrapped up and be home just a few minutes before the heavens opened as promised:

I must confess that I was briefly thinking that I'd somehow managed to blunder into a loss by allowing 27... e2. But 28. Rxg6+! is simply the natural conclusion of white's attacking play; black's position proved surprisingly solid even though he was confined to half of the squares on the Kingside - the major positional error that was 9... Bxc3?! is not to be forgotten - and so a draw was the correct outcome.

 Whilst I missed a few small opportunities (Qc5 was a good stifling idea; gxf5 could have been played sooner) and was a little too obsessive about building up the latter breakthrough and so lost valuable tempi, on the whole I am satisfied with my play. At times it looked very much like an anti-positional crazed hack attack, and it was a close-run thing at the end, but a draw with a 153 is good for me, and I feel that I've let my opponents down if they don't get an interesting game - I surely ticked that box this time! Certainly, it was sufficient for Surrey to upset the grades and grab a narrow victory, whilst our Open team are Southern Counties champions for the second year running after winning at the same venue.

 I was meant to be playing in a qualifier tournament for the National Schools Championship the next day, but the snow caused the postponement of the event for 3 weeks. So I now find myself in the rare situation of being up to date with my chess games on this blog... but fear not, the situation will be remedied soon.