Food for thought

 Over the last few weeks, I have had two rapidplay tournaments, and I managed the unusual feat of stringing together two consecutive good results in events played at high speed. The first of them to start was the latest club rapidplay championship at Castles, which has recently moved much closer to my home, now at Wilson's School (4:30-6:00 on Wednesdays during the school term... cheque in the post?) With most of the stronger players busy revising for exams, and even your author feeling slightly guilty for turning up, I was the second seed by some distance in both directions. However, in spite of my decent score, I felt that I was struggling in the majority of the games, even against supposedly weaker players. Whether this was down to overconfidence, my mind being elsewhere, or the Wilson's squad improving with alarming speed, it certainly had me worried.

Round 3 was especially alarming for me; for much of the game I wondered if I wasn't even worse despite having a token extra pawn, after mishandling a Sicilian Bowdler Attack and getting into time trouble. In the end however, white was unable to maintain his stellar level of play.

Round 4 was especially disappointing, against the only playing member at Castles to outgrade me. I built a nice position with an offbeat line against the French Winawer, then lost the plot completely, made a completely unsound piece sacrifice, blundered further material and went down in a mere 23 moves. I said a few posts ago that I would rather lose a chess game quickly and spectacularly than slowly and painfully, but I didn't have this in mind:

Then a fortnight later, back for Round 5. I played a Caro-Kann to try and rehabilitate it following the loss against O'Molloy at the Surrey Congress, and although I eventually won via an interesting pawn sacrifice, it was not as easy as I would have liked a game against an e50 to be. Pride cometh before the fall, as they say...:

However, the tournament ended on a brighter note, with this quick victory in only 11 moves against a 102 who I have already published on this blog. I believe that this is my first ever graded victory with the King's Gambit in about a half-dozen attempts!

 On first sight, surely not that bad a tournament? I scored 3/4 in the games I played, and performed to at least 136 (if the two ungraded opponents I faced both come in at below 94, at which point the 40-point rule for grading kicks in), which is above my current rapidplay grade. But perhaps providing the game scores with only very light notes (for which I make no apologies; time is short right now) provides only a superficial impression. Whilst I was playing the games, I was most disaffected with my play - I was playing too slowly, my calculation was too lazy, and I was especially careless in the opening of both my black games.

 But the first two rounds, played before the definitive Big One, the Surrey Megafinal, at least cast off some of the rust, and meant that my habitual time trouble was not an issue there. This was to lead to one of my best results of recent times.