Hence it was some relief to hear that the 156 who played above me in the previous two matches was playing, relegating me to white on board 2... or so I thought. He thought I should play above him anyway, as I did two days earlier, since I'm presently playing stronger; I countered that I was slightly sick and played terribly on Monday, and that his grade right now is higher. Eventually, our captain resolved this petty but fierce battle of mutual cowardice and self-interest in his favour, and so I was on the top board after all. It didn't seem to be a problem when Downend turned up with only 4 players, producing a grade line-up of 149-138, 156-127, 109-121, 111-Def, 81-Def, U-81. * And yet we quickly lost on the lower two active boards, and my rollercoaster game was never going particularly well even before a violent self-immolation:
Rather disappointing - my first loss in a graded game since the 18th August (against Prashast Vir.) Although if our captain is reading this, I haven't lost a graded game with white since the 1st May!!
The Closed Sicilian is something I'm familiar with (a hat-tip is due to Susan Lalic, who some time ago showed me the basic way to play it from white's perspective after I lost a particularly gruesome Accelerated Dragon. Boris Spassky was an even greater champion of the line and has played many instructive games in it, if the reader is interested) but it never comes up very often in tournament play, for some reason. Perhaps after such a display I will face it more often now! Sometimes I've considered trying it myself (after all, I've played pretty much everything else against the Sicilian) but lines like 1. e4 c5 2. Nc3 e6 3. g3 d5 put me off.
However, that's not how I play the black side against a 138! I played the more ambitious fianchetto lines, but had my balance knocked slightly by the early Nd5, and even worse followed up an unwary decentralisation 13... Qd8?! by blundering a pawn for what objectively amounts to no compensation with 14... c4? And yet... after that I started playing quite well! By move 25 I was better, and would have had serious chances to complete a remarkable turnaround if I had found 26... h6! But despite seeing the idea as a vague possibility some time earlier, I totally overlooked it, and played an overly aggressive move 26... b4? on the Queenside. After that, my now promising position fell apart almost immediately, with my writhing in time trouble of no help. Given the circumstances, our 3-3 draw (LWLWWL) was very disappointing, and I was very unhappy with the way I came to be on the top board, but I am always very grumpy after losing. Indeed, one of the main reasons I started working hard to improve my playing strength is so that I wouldn't lose all the time (I scored 1/7 in the UK Chess Challenge in Y7, then after a sabbatical, in Y10 I scored 0/7!) and I still hate to lose more than I love to win.
But enough philosophising. In terms of chess content, I can learn most from my error on move 26, I believe. Not only did I ignore the ...h6 tactical possibility, I was also too superficial in analysing the consequences of white accepting the challenge by the obvious 27. cxb4. The fact that I quickly leapt at the opportunity to play the move suggests that I was just too keen in this instance to attack, and also that I wasn't being diligent enough in analysis. I've expressed wonder recently how a number of threatening lines that I ignored but opponents went down turned out to bad, but if that really was intuition on my side, my fortune ran out here. I am no Capablanca, either in temperament or ability, and I cannot afford to lazily coast through games on instinct and only minimal calculation.
The week did end brightly though, as I won the University 'pint-a-point' blitz tournament on Friday night with 6/7 and a performance of 200. But since I'm teetotal, and the 179 and 182 I beat in rounds 5 and 6 respectively were rather intoxicated, it was a slightly hollow victory! I was playing hors concours anyway; the highest drunkard amassed 5.5/7. Don't expect any blog post though! I recently discovered a saying of Nezhmetdinov - "he who analyses blitz games is stupid." Words of wisdom that seem especially applicable to those against opponents with up to 6 pints of beer inside them...
My next game to appear here will be a game in the Bristol League on Wednesday. Should I play the Halloween Gambit if I get the chance?
* Yes, you are meant to default from the bottom up. But our boards 4 and 5 were not as desperate to play as our board 6. A mistake in retrospect perhaps, but when you're being given a 2-0 start in a 6-board match, why not?
"this petty but fierce battle of mutual cowardice and self-interest"
ReplyDeleteWell, quite. Love it.