Champions!

 Not quite a fortnight ago this time, I was playing for Castles on board 1 at CCF. The penultimate match of the season gave us an opportunity to wrap up a league we have led from the beginning, although it seemed that the team we were playing could give us difficulties. Then we arrived. It turned out that they were missing their top two boards, making a distinctly one-sided match: 144-137, 153-81, 120-50, 103-34. When my opponent wasn't there at the start, potentially removing the only worrying pairing from the match, it seemed providence was on our side!

 However, my opponent, the young junior Koby Kalavannan of 137 grade, did arrive in the end. You may call what followed prudence or the coward's way out...

 Despite its brevity, some things can be gleaned from this game. The fact that I took so long to advance a pawn to e5 after ...Nf6 reflected not my failure to pay attention to the DVD on the opening I've seen, but my failure to investigate why this is flatly ruled out there. Then again, blind faith can often backfire so perhaps it was reasonable not to play 8. e5 just because I knew it was what I should play without analysis. I had a decent position in any case. Black's plan of Queenside castling was unusual, although with his Queenside pawns so far down the board, I suspect it can probably be refuted with careful analysis. In an OTB game however, this is less true, and although my half-hearted attempt at a breakthrough was sufficient to keep an advantage, it was not the most incisive; Rb1 and b4, as I've seen in a Spassky-Timman Closed Sicilian game before, is a strong plan.

 Of course, the main importance is the match win! DWWW was emphatic enough a way to win the division, even if I could conceivably have crowned things even more spectacularly with a 4-0 win if I'd made the effort. For this match as for the season as a whole, I must congratulate my team-mates on a very consistent series of performances, which make up for my more average score (at present, +2 =3 -1.) Our last match of the season in mid-April highlights the difficulties of having a seven-round swiss of 10 teams - the teams in 1st and 2nd have been downfloated to play the teams in 9th and 10th!