The empire strikes back

 I said in my last post that we were not sure if UWE would send a team to play in the Varsity Match on Wednesday. In short - they didn't. Still, we had a room booked from 3pm onwards, so it was an extra-long day of chess anyway, mainly consisting of tandem team blitz games (my posts are long, but even I don't have the space or patience to explain) and even the odd bit of Chess960. It was rather prophetic of me to point out that this may not prove very helpful in our league match to come later in the day... indeed, I make it a rule never to play friendly games just before a serious encounter, which was the cause of much bemusement at Sutton GS.

 Of course, this was pretty much the worst time to disrupt my zen, since the University 1st-team was away (2 minutes away, to be precise) at our opposite numbers from Clifton, by some margin the strongest team in the Bristol League. You may recall that we drew with them at the start of the season (I held a 182 to a draw on board 6) and valiantly clung to their coat-tails in the league for a while, even holding the lead over Christmas, but the loss of our unbeaten record a few weeks ago also marked the effective end of our title bid. Nonetheless, I was wondering if they would try to smash us for our temerity.

 As it happened, of the three IMs they had at the start of the season, one only ever plays for the B-team so as to be assured board 1, another was only in Bristol for a few months, and the third was unavailable. But our problems were worse; I was now as high as board 3, and we lack Clifton's frightening depth. The grades were clearly against us: 187-187, 180-178, 162-192, 162-180, 156-176, 144-169.

 I was playing their highest-graded player, Nick Frost (192). I didn't know it until I did my research for this post, but it marked my first ever graded game against a titled player - he is a FIDE Master. He got the title in 2000 * and isn't out of his twenties yet, so must have been quite a prodigy back then, but until the start of this season he'd been inactive for 9 years. Unfortunately for me, the rust didn't show...

 Clifton's victory was nothing if not emphatic - we were rewarded with a mere WLLLLL - although it was a closer match than that, for we had chances on most boards at one time or other. Unfortunately mine wasn't one of them! Physically I may have turned up a safe 10 minutes ahead of even the official start time, but my brain only followed an hour later and by then I was already a piece down - I did everything wrong in the opening! I maintain that opening knowledge is a big thing, but a thin range of lines is clearly not the answer either.

 My opponent seemed a friendly enough person, but it must be said that his appraisal of my play was not flattering - he condemned 8. Bxe7 as "just bad" and thought it better to resign than to try 22. Rxd7+. But in general this scorn was justified, and in conjunction with the manner of my recent victories it does seem that I got quite a taste of my own medicine! I've always said that I reserve the right to be only as critical of others' play as of my own, so I cannot complain - and I did play atrociously. Indeed, the resemblence continues down to his apparent conviction that the usual collapse of white's centre in the Alekhine-Chatard makes it unsound, whilst I hold that white's attacking prospects make it almost impossible for sub-200 players to defend adequately. So who knows... perhaps one day this will be the FMDJY Chess Blog. A man can dream, as they say.

 In the meantime however, I will have to be content with the end of the Spring term at Bristol University, which means I will be home in Surrey from this evening. I am a (probably superfluous) reserve for Castles' cup semi-final on Wednesday, but it is more likely that my next games will be in an Easter Congress. I'm not sure which one yet though!


* A bit of investigation needed by this history student to figure out how, since although by no means shabby to peak at 194 and 2164, you usually need to reach 2300 Elo for it. I'm not certain, but some digging in ChessBase leads me to think it was from a very good result in the World Amateur Championship at Hastings in 2000. But I don't know for sure - if you know better, please say so!