Like father, like son

 For the showdown game, I had to play a 160. That was Martin Muir, of FIDE rating 1809. He is the father of Daniel Muir who I played in the previous round; as I observe below, I had some unusual pairings in this tournament! I needed to win to avoid damage to both ratings and manage the rare feat of winning a prize, but even with white it wouldn't be easy.

 On the other hand, he usually plays the French Defence, and not the best line either. Unfortunately my preparation is never particularly reliable, and normality was restored after scoring a home run in round 3 - Muir's repertoire appeared to be very narrow from his e2e4 games, but here he played something completely unexpected, which certainly achieved its target - producing an interesting game. It almost worked:

 Two very sharp games from two against the Muir family, both ending in draws and both leaving me disappointed and yet relieved. Here, after black made a better job of implementing his plan than I did of mine, he quickly had a clear positional advantage, and later a material one. However he couldn't quite finish me off, and with a little help from him, I was able to conjure enough activity to salvage a draw. This game provides further evidence to support my theory that activity is perhaps the critical determining factor in chess games. As has been said already, I needed a win, so I can't be entirely satisfied with this outcome, but it was a small triumph nonetheless - it is still not often that I am able to avoid defeat against 160+ players.

 Of the tournament itself, I managed a plus score for 3/5. I missed the U-1800 grading prize by half a point (it would have been £23.33, so a small loss from the £25 entry fee) but I think it is foolish to see tournaments as a profit-making enterprise below the professional level - winning something is just a welcome extra. More annoying for me are the consequences for ECF grade (a 141 performance, although with 3 juniors from 5 players, and Vir performing close to 170 for this tournament, that ought to improve when grades are re-calculated in January) and FIDE rating (-10.2 Elo) but again the losses are not of great magnitude.

 All in all, a useful reintroduction to OTB chess after a long (by my standards!) time away, and that rustiness can help explain the slightly below-par performance. I am not sure when I will next play games that will reach this blog - I hope to play in the blitz tournament at CCF on Monday, but unlike the Grandmaster I played in the same event 12 months ago, I certainly won't be recording! Maybe it will be the next Richmond Rapidplay in mid September.

 P.S.: If you have as keen an eye for completely useless statistics as I do, you might be interested to know that this is the 100th post to this blog.