Asphyxiation!

 Last Friday, I was as ever on board 3 for Sutton Grammar, as we travelled to KCS Wimbledon for the penultimate league fixture of the season. I at last had a game with white to smile at, against the 154-graded Nishant Bommayya.

 The grade line-up was 203-146, 153-155, 144-154, 143-147, 144-121, 121-121, which suggested a close match. For most of the time it was, and yet eventually we won crushingly. Anyway, my own contribution was this very nice strategic steamroller:

Black never really succeeded in solving his opening problems in this game. White usually plays the Grand Prix Attack hoping for a straightforward Kingside hack that resolves itself into checkmate on move 20, and I am no different! But my fruitful debut of this line was rather more strategic in character, making use of extra space and development to eventually crash through into the black position and build a commanding advantage. My eventual conversion left a lot to be desired, in no small part down to his successful attempts to irritate and anger me, but I've said enough of that elsewhere.

 The match ended 5.5-0.5 in our favour, as explained in the notes (WDWWWW), and it proved to be by some distance our A-team's biggest of 7 wins over the course of the 10-match league season. One would not have predicted that score after an hour of play, yet things so often turn inexplicably in our favour. Our very old team is a problem in the National Schools Championship, but serves us well in the Briant Poulter League, as all the additional experience and maturity comes with no strings attached. That's the only reason I can come up with for our win against a team of two Y9s, a Y10, a Y11 and two Y12s, with our own team comprising two Y12s and four Y13s. In any case, after a run of indifferent results with black, this kickstarted a nice run of results with white.