I had problems trying to predict their board order beforehand, amused to notice their captain, comfortably highest-graded at 125, consistently placing himself on board 2 or 3 to get white. He wasn't around this time, but still the order was rather odd: 149-107, 156-107, 127-U, 111-U, 81-106, U-120. Whilst I'm not that bothered, their order is very dubious when one considers their board 3 is an unpublished 121 and 4 is performing at 114 for the season. Still, I was involved with running the Sutton GS chess teams for the last two years, so I am hardly entitled to complain about unpredictable and sometimes flatly inexplicable board orders...
Anyway, I had black against a 107, Miles Davies. Even without taking the match context into account, any result other than a win would have been unacceptable! I wasn't really satisfied with the opening, but my opponent was even less comfortable; before I knew it, some tactics showed up on the board and it was all over within an hour:
I struggle to remember the last time I was the first board in a match to finish, as I am not usually a very fast player. In fact, I cannot recall anything earlier than a game I played in March 2011 in the Briant Poulter League against Trinity School; ironically, that was on board 1 for the SGS B-team. It lasted 50-odd moves and also about 1 hour. Eventually we came out on top 4-2, WWWLWL. Our top 3 boards constructed winning positions quickly*, and board 5 smoothly converted a Rook ending two pawns up despite black and a big grading deficit, so in the end the endgame grinds we suffered on 4 and 6 were superfluous to the overall outcome.
This is the first game for a while in which I have actually been satisfied with my play, which I think can justly be termed rather merciless. White's apparent ignorance of this sort of position, though surprising, was also costly. After 13. Rb1? it's effectively all over, especially as I was playing incisively enough to find moves like 15... Qa5 and 19... Nd7. Indeed, when hypermodern openings work for the side offering space, they tend to work extremely well.
Nonetheless, I was very depressed after seeing 4. e3, and until his tactical oversight was happy with my position but not sure where it was going. So this time I really do think it's time to give the Benko Gambit a rest for a while - harsh reward for winning in 19 moves! The problem is, what else? I've had some delightful blitz games with its cousin, the Blumenfeld Gambit (this is sufficient excuse to point the reader towards the well-known but spectacular demonstration of the power of space, Tarrasch-Alekhine 1922) but white has to be rather obliging with his move order so opportunites are scarce. The Nimzo-Indian is, I think, objectively the flat-out soundest response to 1. d4, and I've dabbled in it from the beginning, but there are plenty of lines that don't appeal to my playing style. The Grünfeld is sharper, but I have no OTB experience with it and black seems alarmingly prone to either getting squashed or being hacked to pieces. We'll see what I come up with.
Looking ahead, I have now reached 20 games in this grading period, and the above win brought my grading performance down (!) to 164. The next one could be on Wednesday for the University A-team, but I think most people are available. It seems the final B-team match before Christmas will be postponed, in which case my next game would be in Surrey again, or failing that at the FIDE-rated U-21 section of the London Junior Championship (28-30 December.)
* Well, I say quickly. It didn't take many moves; on board 3 our (ex-SGS) player won a pawn on move 6, and as so often his game became a cascade of one tactical shot after another and white was soon annihilated. Amazingly that one started out as a Queen's Indian Defence; we share a knack for creating fireworks at will no matter the opening! But board 2 was somewhere between farce and scandal. We had white: 1. e4 d5 2. d4 a6 3. Nc3 dxe4 4. f3 e6 5. fxe4 Bb4 6. Nf3 b5 7. Bd3 Bb7 8. O-O Nf6 9. e5 Nd5 10. Ne4 Be7 11. Nfg5 f6 12. Nxe6 Qc8 13. Nxg7+ Kd8 14. exf6 Nxf6 15. Nxf6 Bxf6 16. Rxf6 Rg8 17. Bg5. By this time, about 45 minutes had passed. White's much greater strength combined with black's laughably wet opening has given the first player an overwhelming advantage. Black now just wandered around for 40 minutes, including a visit to the bar, and when our player was out of the room eventually played a move: 17...Rxg7 18. Rf8+Kd7 19. Bf5+ Kd6 20. Bf4+ 1-0. Rather odd behaviour all in all; perhaps he wanted to make my game last longer, which it did by one half-move. But his antics meant it was one of the last games to finish.
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