No doubt the reader was hoping that I'd forgotten about the need to make this post, but no such luck I'm afraid! The data below concerns all of my games in the last grading period, that is from 1st January - 30th June. For my analysis of the previous 6 months, see Part I. As ever, what follows isn't exactly light reading, and might well only be of interest to me, but it's useful for me to have it on record.
Unsurprisingly, the overall picture has declined with my results. I think that it is mainly because my increased grade has brought tougher opponents: from July - December, the average for slowplay was 142.7; from January - June that figure rose to 153.5. Rapidplay was even more dramatic - from 111.5 to 139.2. However, given that my own grades, I should have done better than +16 =7 -14 from 37 slowplay games, and +6 =3 -6 from 15 rapidplay games. I am definitely prone to long runs of form, but also I am dependent on confidence - the season went sluggishly up to the Torquay Open, for I had endless numbers of tough pairings with black, but then at BUCA I scored highly on bottom board, and things started to swing back again. However I was then crushed by an FM in a league match, sending me into a tailspin that I didn't escape until the Steve Boniface Open 11 weeks later - by then, it was already a write-off.
But again I had more whites! It seems a long time ago that I was winning game after game; this time the white pieces were a liability at rapidplay speed and I barely got an overall plus score (+12 =6 -10.) That said, having black was not far behind (+10 =4 -10) and I seem to have gotten over a fear of moving second that my results rarely justified. My main strength for much of the season has been conversion against lower-graded opponents; when I had a grading advantage of 20 or more I scored an overall +10 =2 -1. Conversely I am not much use when outgraded, as can be seen from my overall +2 =4 -12 score. The +1 =2 -5 that I scored in the -10 to -19 band was particularly disappointing, though in fact my recent draw with Kevin White was my only score from 6 games against players above that.
I often came out on the wrong side of games ending in under 30 moves (+3 =4 -5) - as I eventually concluded, my trusty opening repertoire was getting long in the tooth. The Sicilian dominated again from both sides; I had as many black games with it as with all other openings combined. Interestingly black did slightly better whichever colour I had, likewise for the Caro-Kann - I got only +1 =1 -2 as white, but I won both of my games as black to complete a 6/6 run for the season. It has been a half-year of turnarounds everywhere - I would not have predicted negative scores against the Pirc (+1 =0 -2) and 1. e4 e5 (+1 =1 -2), and certainly not a flattering even score against the French (+1 =0 -1.) Though my dabbling in the English went well (+1 =2 -0), the same cannot be said of my great hope back in January, black in the Nimzo-Indian - I lost all 3 games with it.
Of my 52 games in this list only 10 (19.2%) ended in draws, a slightly lower proportion than 11/56 (19.6%) in the first half of the season. A far bigger dip was in the mean draw offers per game - previously it was 32 in 56 (0.57/game), now just 18 in 52 (0.35/game). I made exactly half of them (up from 46.9%) and had 4 declined (44.4% - way down from 71.4%) - I also declined 4 of the 9 offers received (previously 64.7%.) My interpretation of this is that frivolous offers have disappeared, leaving only the ineradicable ones that arise from positions remaining very drawish even after some probing. My median game length is over 40 moves.
My endgame play is progressing nicely; the half-season still had more than its fair share of tragicomedies but this time the balance was sharply in my favour, and I made an overall plus score* (+9 =5 -7). Rook endings were the norm of course - only one of my 21 endgames didn't include them. My forté seems to be minor-piece endgames; with Bishops I scored +8 =4 -2, and with Knights +6 =3 -2. It highlights my prejudices that I got into 6 endings with a Bishop against a Knight (+3 =2 -1), but never with Knight against Bishop. I am quite proud of my score in pawn-down endings (+1 =1 -2) and I also managed to win endings where I was in areers to the tune of an exchange and even a piece. Thus my overall score for games of under 30 moves was only 41.7%, rising to 55.2% for games of over 40 moves.
Finally we come to my latest doomed attempt to predict the numbers that will be next to my name when the July 2013 grading list is published in a couple of weeks. For slowplay, I can be quite accurate; I reached 30 games, so no countbacks, and only had 3 games against juniors. With an attempt at predicting their grades from what's on the grading database, I will go for 159 slowplay. Rapidplay is harder, since I only played 15 games and have to include 4 junior opponents. The 15 games of this period are only worth a 143 performance, but since the previous list went so well for me, I carry enough forward to be plumping for 149 as my new rapid grade. But I'm usually a couple of points too high, so I am braced for disappointment come the new list. Indeed, I might be struggling to hold down a place in my own University team...
Even by my standards, this post is now becoming far too unwieldy, so I'll leave it there. Normal posts will soon resume; I played a game yesterday at CCF, which I will try to annotate shortly.
* My loose definition of an endgame for this post has been a position with at most 3 pieces for each side. I have excluded games with a trivial material advantage for one side, that is, more than a piece.
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