This is the first post in a while I've really not looked forward to making - the tournament a few days ago in the Docklands didn't go as well as I had hoped, but I managed to produce a couple of coherent strong performances. This, however, must go down as a tragicomedy. Few are less likely to play a game in the style I maintained for the first 60-odd moves, but the remaining dozen moves have my fingerprints all over them:
At least I escaped with a half-point, for I might well have lost this game. My love-hate relationship with the humble pawn continues - sometimes I think we should just get rid of them. Usually I end up playing gambits to get them out of the way in any case...
This game is certainly going straight into the Stuff of Nightmares compartment of my memory, but it was highly unusual for me to grind away with a small positional advantage and inexorably make progress. It's not often that I maintain an overarching plan for almost the whole game, much less successfully implement it. Black's doubled Kingside pawns look like very little for a large part of the game, but after the vital h5! move, they soon fell apart. Then again, perhaps I underestimated the power of his Bishop even after every single one of my pawns reached a square of the opposite colour - its range was much greater than my Knight, and allowed Fry to tenaciously maintain an unlikely defence.
As for the denouement, many things could be said. My embarrassing oversight at move 37, where I forgot that taking en passant was possible despite planning it on the previous move, was perhaps an early hint that my concentration was starting to drift. This was the last game in the room to finish - good value for a friendly game! - and went on well past 11pm, so perhaps there was an element of fatigue. Perhaps my technique was just as poor as usual, but actually I don't think so - I've had lots of endgames/Queenless middlegames recently and scored way more than my reputation says I should, and I was in the technician frame of mind for most of this game. Instead, I would say that I played the preceding moves ca. 48-60 too slowly, something I am often prone to in trivially winning positions, essentially a manifestation of paranoia caused by games like this. But then I was in time trouble from the mid-60s, and so rushed when I should have been thinking. If I'd managed my time better, I would have been able to calculate the key b4-b5! pawn lever lines, as well as the vital 67. f5!. As it was, I hastily played the natural Queenside moves, and was soon in a lost position, quite unthinkable 5 moves earlier. It was also a question of willingness to calculate, however - I switched off after winning two pawns, and became lazy. This is something I regularly warn myself, and readers, against doing!
So not the happiest of returns to home so far. But now I have a week-and-a-half to recharge before the London Junior U-21, which I shall put to good use to recuperate as well as prepare. Finally, of course, this period also includes Christmas, for which I would like to wish everyone the very best.
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