It's been some time since my last post, but in the last 3 weeks I have settled back into my degree course, so I no longer have an embarassment of riches when it comes to spare time. I have though managed 14 games since last weekend, and here I give the first six of them.
As I've mentioned previously, Bristol University have entered the 4NCL this season, and the curtain-raiser for the last few years has been a two-day rapidplay tournament. The format is quite nice - team event on Saturday, individual on Sunday. The time control, 10 minutes + 10 seconds per move, felt a lot more like blitz to me than rapid - though others disagreed - and this sometimes shows in the quality of play! Both days were 7-round affairs, so needless to say some were flagging by the end.
We had a midfield seeding, and got the pairing we wanted more than any other in the first round - against Guildford, who definitely were out to win. I was only on the third of four boards, but found myself playing a GM for the first time in a graded game - that legend of the weekender circuit, Mark Hebden (249/2496). It was also my debut on DGT internet boards, and predictably didn't end well, but who can object to a free lesson? Hebden is best-known as a hacker but this was a crystal-clear positional smash:
Round 2 was not much of an improvement. This time we met "West is Best", and I played Matthew Davies (158/1929.) This time the game went on long enough for me to realise how awkward the time control was - after threatening to get an advantage for most of the middlegame, it all fell apart very quickly:
Since our squad was composed of 5 players, and matches were 4 boards, it was my turn to sit out round 3 - as it happened, the only game I missed out all weekend. For round 4 I was back, on board 3 as usual, in the second half of a triangular match against Buckinghamshire Juniors and CSC 6. My opponent Robert Byron (*119), was from the former. An outrageously direct opening should never have worked, but I was perturbed and had to endure some nerves before he imploded at the end:
Round 5 was the latest episode in my never-ending battle to find a good reply to 1. d4, and it saw me right back where I started - wheeling out my first genuine King's Indian Defence for a long time. But I couldn't force white (Alan Bright, e150) into a sharp position, and badly misplayed the quiet middlegame. But I was presented with one too many chances to escape, and finally broke free, albeit only to draw. In the end we beat CSC 5 by a narrow 2.5-1.5.
The penultimate round gave the team another encounter with the large CSC squad (2nd-team, this time) and me white against John Foley (162/2018), who is quite well-known in the Surrey area. In some ways this marked a repudiation of positional ideals - I tried hard to play solidly and assertively, and for a while it was going well, but I couldn't cope simultaneously with him becoming active and the clock coming into play:
Thus, when I came to play the BCM Dragons' Robert Kane (169/1851) in the final round, subtlety went out the window and I returned to an opening I don't trust but have a +6 =2 -0 score with - the Fantasy Caro-Kann. Though I walked into a disreputable line, the fatigue of the day finally made itself obvious and he collapsed to defeat in only 16 moves:
All told, 2.5/6 against this field is quite respectable in my view - I did outperform my rapid grade, after all. I think I became gradually more pugilistic as the day wore on - I was disappointed with the game against Hebden not because I lost, but because I didn't really resist at all and certainly didn't give a true account of myself. But game-by-game I did start to fight, and by the last couple of games I was right back in the swing of things. Whether this was because of concious stylistic decisions or just rediscovering my mojo, I'm not sure, but I'm inclined to the latter - not since April have I truly been playing regularly, and this was just the sort of shock treatment needed.
It is also in support of this theory that I feel the individual event on Sunday went rather better. My surprisingly tough 6-hour weeks are obviously slowing down the rate of posts considerably, but it will be up soon, I hope.
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