We played Horfield C, who have won all their matches in the league this season, largely on the back of greater depth than anyone else. This is in contrast to the strategy that usually gets the University wins, namely crashing through at the top. As an aside, our board 2 on this evening was someone who was in my year at Sutton Grammar, where he was settled on board 6 for our 1st team by the end. In any case, the grades were 149-136, 127-129, 111-137, 109-128, U-114, U-U. It didn't help that both of our bottom two boards had to be drafted in late, but so be it.
My contribution to the match was the below game against Michael Gladstone, a 136. Observing the age of my opponent, I resolved to search for an interesting position, but despite resurrecting the Dutch to that end, my caution in the opening set the scene for a simply awful game, that was nothing if not forgettable:
Our 2-4 loss came by DLLDLW. My first thought is that if I want to keep the interest of my readers, I must make sure I never play a game like that again! Not that I'd want to. I must confess that after my comment about Capablanca last week, I took the long-overdue decision to have a look at some of his games (hitherto, I'd read the section on him in Kasparov's superb My Great Predecessors series, but nothing else.) Whilst that seemed to rub off on some of my recent blitz games, and even gave me hopes of squeezing a win out of this, it was never really on and I can only conclude that (for now) it is really not my style of chess. Which can only be a good thing for entertainment value.
Also, it is interesting to note my desire to play a Classical Dutch almost immediately reverting to a Stonewall instead. I am perhaps too afraid of allowing white the e4 pawn break, hence I regularly end up doing this. Unfortunately the position is super-solid, not helped by white quickly playing Ne5 and f4 himself, and since the position is hard to open, it is hard to play productively. Further, computers really struggle in this sort of position; one game that is hilarious and insightful in equal measure is Alterman-Fritz, 2000. Hence trying to evaluate my play in this game is very difficult. I think I played more ambitiously than Gladstone did, and I really was pressing, but he never seems to have been in any great danger. Don't forget that the last time I played a high-130s player with black, in my very previous game, I lost!
In the meantime, I am still slightly guilty about publishing such a dull game. As consolation to the reader for patience, and to show what black should be aiming for when playing a Dutch, here is a game you probably won't find in the databases. Watch how it's done as former Sutton GS top board Robert Heaton single-mindedly hacks his way to victory on Oxford's behalf in the 2008 Varsity Match:
It's an interesting point that games by strong amateurs can often be more interesting that those played by the top Grandmasters, precisely because the play is slightly less precise; there is more room for creativity. I have a decent store of games like that, kept for a rainy day... hopefully I won't need to dip into it any time soon, however! My next game comes from a surprising yet also familiar source: I am at home this weekend, and it just so happens (!) that the Surrey U-160 team has a match on Saturday. My record in county matches is rather good, so hopefully I can nip the current run of poor form in the bud.
Edit; 03/11: As I said, I'm home this weekend, which also means temporary access to Houdini, which has noticeably good positional understanding for an engine (I'm not paid for saying that, no matter how often I sing its praises!!) After 7. h3?!, the evaluation was never more than 0.15 to either side.
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