Traffic-jam chess

 Yesterday (up to date at last!) I played on board 11 of 12 for Surrey A in the ECF U-18 Counties Championship at Eton College. 30th June was the final day of the grading season, so the last chance to try and knock grades upwards. Nonetheless, we were unfortunately missing quite a few people; the grades of our team were 183-174-169-160-159-158-156-154-153-144-144-144. Relative to the other teams, we were regretting missing our best players (I can think of 4 potential 200+ people we theoretically could have used), but at the bottom our depth was second to none.
 
 Surrey were one of only two counties to enter two teams into the U-18 Open section, which was run in a jamboree format. It doesn't seem quite right that two people from the same county can be paired together, but that's how it was, and by an extended irony I even faced someone from the same school - Lucian Heeler, of ECF grade 102. He plays a low board for our B-team, so of course, as A-team captain I had to win! However, I cannot complain, as we travelled together and so neither of us lost time on the clock despite arriving 20 minutes late thanks to traffic. I thought it would be an interesting game, but despite victory I'm not sure it was:

 I was rather surprised to notice that my opponent was reading "Winning Chess Strategies" by Yasser Seirawan on the way there. From this game, it would seem that he would be much better served by the American GM's book in the same series on tactics (titled, imaginatively enough, "Winning Chess Tactics") which, having read, I would recommend to most people. Chess is 99% tactics, as Teichmann once said! Some of white's oversights in this game were simply unforgiveable. I regret being so unusually harsh on an opponent, especially as I know he will read this, although in mitigation, I am inclined to agree with him when he suggests that he is burnt out from a full season of playing at Sutton Grammar and Coulsdon CF. Before this paragraph becomes just too unwieldy, I should also like to squeeze in this - having an idea of strategic concepts is one thing, but fusing that with positional judgement is another. White's first lemon, 6. e5?, serves as a prime example since he seemed very enthused about the concept of territorial domination. So whilst white notices that he is gaining space by this, black's positional sense immediately flags this move as un-natural, indeed just plain wrong, here because it's breaking basic opening principles (same piece twice in the opening; avoid unnecessary pawn moves) and over-extending without adequate support. Black's continuation is harmonious with the intention of punishing this mistake, and indeed 6... Ng6 immediately wins the e-pawn. In short, just like players who try to force tactical complications, white's attempt to forcefully implement a strategy of his choosing is misguided - we must all play the position on the board, or at least choose opening lines where our preferred strategies are viable.

 Now taking my SGS coaching hat off, my play was hardly a model either! Whilst I could claim the stress of the journey, likewise my opponent, I certainly did not seem to be concentrating as fully as I could have been. I mis-evaluated the piece-winning fork in the opening on both moves when it was playable (12... O-O; 13... d5), was scared of ghosts when trying to visualise (11... Be7), displayed impatience and a failure to look properly at white's possibilities (22... f5; 24... exd3+) and even succumbed to the compulsive desire to give a check when it was available despite no positional benefit (26... Be4+.) It truly was fortunate that I did not have to play one of the other counties that had 140+ players on board 11, or my morning round could have been a very bad memory.

 But as they say, in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is King...