Greater patience allows a violent solution

 Yesterday I had my first A-team match for over 3 weeks, when we played Horfield A away (although they are within walking distance of our home venue.) This is the same club that beat our B-team 4-2 recently when I played a very dull draw in a Stonewall Dutch.

 In their previous matches, they had consistently been fielding all of their top players, so it was a surprise to realise that they had a great many missing on this occasion, although we too were somewhat under strength. Grades were (ours first) 179-183, 176-166, 187-159, 168-151, 149-152, 144-99. I didn't quite realise at the time how much of an advantage we had, and we smashed the expected score as well, winning on both of the boards where we were outgraded (although our board 1 on this occasion is a 190+ strength player, certainly... the numbers can lie.)

 I had white against a 152, Roger Pearce. Unknowingly playing the Smith-Morra Gambit against a fellow practitioner of it, I was disappointed to find myself in the Declined form of the gambit, which morphs into a Maroczy Bind most of the time, as it did here. Not my sort of thing, and I don't think I handled it quite as one is supposed to. But my opponent cracked under the strain, or the temptation of pushing my clock, tried to spice things up and only succeeded in bringing the game to an abrupt conclusion:

 On paper, the University has one of the strongest teams in the league at full strength, so it was helpful to finally break the drawing rut in style, with WWDWWW. It didn't look for most of the night as though it should be anywhere near that convincing (their board 6 put up a tremendous fight and looked better for a while before succumbing in an ending, the mating attack on board 4 sprung out of nowhere, we looked very uncomfortable in the opening on board 2 and later reached a surely drawn Rook ending...) but we can hardly complain.

 As for me, I have noticed recently a tendency to be impatient and try to force matters, and on the basis of this game I am certainly not the only one. Certainly, after 22. Qd4+ I didn't expect that the game would be over 10 moves later, but his response ...e5!? brought the game to life, and tactically things always favoured white's more harmonious position. Besides, when the going gets tactical, the tactical get going! That said, I feel I played the early middlegame quite badly, plus even going into a Maroczy Bind seems not the best. I let too many pieces get traded off, and never really had a concrete plan except 'wait for him to buckle.' That worked, as it did against Haridas in June, but what if he had just sat there rather than lashing out? I guess we'll never know...

 I have another game later today, as I continue my mission to reach 30 games in this 6-month grading period. Right now I'm at 17 and edging back towards a 170 performance...