Squeezed and destroyed

 For the second round of the BUCA Championship, we played against Edinburgh, who won the competition with ease last year, as I understand it. Even with a slightly under-strength team (they brought 5 players, and rotated each person as a reserve) they were able to comprehensively outgrade us: 187-e206, 180-199, 168-190, 162-184. Hardly a dream pairing for us, but not altogether surprising, and we could only play them once!

 I played against the 184-graded Hamish Olson. Not feeling in the mood for a Sicilian theoretical discussion with 2. Nf3, I opted to try the Smith-Morra Gambit. If the first round was a textbook example of how a stronger player beats a weaker one (wait for mistakes and punish them), this was a typical gambit gone wrong scenario: black methodically squeezes and eliminates white's compensation, the first player then writhes and tries some desperate things, and black picks up the pieces.

 Far from my best performance, but that is not to detract from my opponent's display, since he outplayed me throughout and completely deserved to win. 9... Ne5!? is a move I've never taken seriously, but perhaps it deserves more respect than its reputation (although I defer to higher authority; there have been exhaustive works on the gambit by Hannes Langrock and more recently Marc Esserman, which I haven't read.) As in my game against Peter Andreev at the London Junior Open, doubled pawns in the centre proved helpful, because they controlled useful squares. Indeed, as I type, yesterday Anand won a master tournament in Baden-Baden by actually winning an endgame with doubled IQPs, such was their power. Sometimes, one is in the mood to play a gambit, and feel content with the loss of pawn for activity. On this occasion, I just wasn't, and errors like 18. a5? and 29. Bxa6?? just ran my position ever further downhill. For me, it needs to be saved for the right occasion; when it works, all is well; when it doesn't...

 However, this game was not so significant, as we pulled off a shock draw via LWWL, albeit not without a nervous end as our board 2 successfully converted K+Q vs. K+R. A fine result for us, but it seemed to demoralise Edinburgh, who never really got going again - they beat York easily enough (3-1, since their opponents had a 226 on board 1) in round 3, but then limped to a second 2-2 draw against LSE and even lost in the final round to Warwick, 1.5-2.5 As such, despite being top seeds and overwhelming favourites, they were only 6th in the end.

 Our event too, though, never quite regained these heights...