At last, some killer instinct

 This afternoon (perhaps I am setting a personal best for board-to-blog time?) I found myself at the recently rather familiar venue of the Coulsdon Chess Fellowship, this time playing as a filler in the FIDE-rated Open section of their Late Summer Congress. My opponent was to be a Spaniard, Julio Hernandez Castro, whose ECF grade of 156 almost converts to his 1874 FIDE rating. The question of whether English ratings are deflated relative to those of continental Europe (because most of our chess isn't FIDE-rated, improving juniors move up the scale quite slowly and so in turn take too many points from the stronger players) is an interesting one, but best saved for another time.

 After a rather inauspicuous opening, this game really came to life when the tactics started (hooray!) around move 20. My positionally-inclined opponent soon found himself a piece in areers, but required me to work very hard - this proved to be another unlooked-for test of my reliably unreliable technique:

 For much of the ending, I could not help but be reminded of the disaster of truly apocalyptic proportions that struck in this meeting with the junior player Patrick Smith - not least because on this afternoon he was playing on the next board down! I was slightly conservative at times - 35... Nf5?! springs to mind immediately - but this time wasn't overtaken by the perfectionism that proved my undoing in the earlier game, and with the good practical move 53... Bxb5!, conferring mental clarity as much as anything else, it did not take much longer to establish an obviously winning position. This apparent discovery of a long-missing killer instinct can also be seen in the conscious decision to go for the full point with 22... b5, although it is true that I offered an early draw two moves before that.

 Perhaps I was fortunate to have read an article by the American trainer and NM, Dan Heisman, on Chess.com a few hours earlier - he could have been talking directly to me when he explicitly stated "never offer a draw in a good position against a stronger player just to gain rating points. Think of a draw offer as an offer to remain ignorant of what you would have learned if the game had continued." Though I have only very recently discovered his columns on Chess.com (and also the "Novice Nook" on ChessCafe), so far they seem very good indeed. Certainly, that influenced the game-changing shift in my mindset that proved so fruitful, and this also partly puts to rest the lingering pain of the loss to Smith (although I expect I will still wake up in the middle of the night in a few decades when 39... Rxc7??? crosses my mind!)

 This win proved a nice tonic for the recent loss to Prashast Vir, and looks set to restore my FIDE rating to over 1780 for the first time since November. But I may have more filler games in this tournament - you and I shall both find out soon.

 Later: I had no more games. I was amused to note, however, that despite only playing one game, I finished higher in the score-table than an FM who fully entered the tournament! Also, I forgot to mention in my annotations that I feared at the board the strong practical try 46. Nxh7!? trying to reach K vs. K+N+B; in a blitz finish that's extremely difficult to pull off, even though I have tried to learn it in the past. Of course, Houdini completely ignores this possibility, for it knows there is a mate, but human amateurs must be wary.