Their team selection has been very consistent so far this season; in an elated mood having finished my latest essay the day before and discovered earlier on the day itself that the last one had yielded my first 1st, I decided to take a bit of time off to prepare. Downend are a club full of time-trouble addicts but I would face the worst of them: as such I was ready to play the Nimzo-Larsen Attack (1. Nf3, 2. b3) and idle around for 30 moves until his flag fell. But since this is me, having spent a fair time preparing, the reader can guess what happened next...
I had prepared for the right person! But he'd fallen ill that day and dropped out at the last moment so I was playing a substitute. Obviously. I had skimmed over the games I could find of everyone else around that part of Downend's board order just in case - but when I discovered I was playing Megan Owens (159) I realised it had happened again anyway. Since she played only a couple of games the season before, is now of university age and wasn't listed on the squad page of Downend's otherwise-commendable website* I hadn't bothered. A large part of preparation is to give psychological assurance, I think, so that was a blow. But it could be worse - apparently she was only there at all because she thought Downend's top two teams were playing each other!
Every other board was as it should have been though, so I reckoned we had slightly preferable chances despite identical grades on half the boards: 209-191, e180-180, 186-168, 165-165, 159-159, 160-154. An interesting scenario, but the game itself didn't really measure up; with both players a little disorientated, perhaps the result was less of a surprise than the moves suggest:
The most important thing is always the match result, and we pick-pocketed another 3.5-2.5 win, DLWWDD, helped no end by our superior time management. Whilst my opponent was pondering the draw offer a couple of the boards deteriorated badly, so that outcome looked most unlikely for a long while.
What can one say of my game? Owens has consistently been around 170 for the last few years, and is the highest FIDE-rated Welsh girl**, so not a bad outcome. I was lucky that she hasn't played at all since the British Championship finished in early August, for she was definitely a little rusty - complaints about endlessly calculating the same short sequence of moves are a tell-tale sign. For my part, I just wasn't seeing any moves at all - I was comprehensively move-ordered in the opening, missed 14. Rhd1 with a simple defence of the d-pawn, didn't know that 14... e5 existed until it was played, confidently dismissed 15... Be6! as impossible, and replied very poorly having overlooked one alternative and rejected the other on account of an illegal move. Not bad for an 18-move draw which was almost all theory, eh?
There was only one thing I did well in this game, and that was offer a draw. Any sooner would have been too cowardly - with the match so finely poised, I had a duty to push whilst my position was better - but any later and black's advantage may well have become clear enough for it to be turned down. I got the impression my opponent didn't especially want to be there, and so made a lucky escape - running a nice, risk-free edge downhill so quickly deserved sterner punishment that my team-mates jibing me for being so shameless as to offer a draw in the final position! Actually, as further evidence of the theory I expounded upon when commenting on the game against Hearne, when I offered the draw I was influenced by what had come before and still thought I was minutely better, probably just equal. Only as she sat there pondering did I think, "hang on..."
It seems I've started drawing with everyone in sight again - perhaps resting myself for the home matches in order to be there as a reserve isn't the best policy. But the 4NCL starts this weekend, and I'll be in the Bristol University team - plus we have an away match at Clevedon on Monday, so 3 games in as many days. I have to start work on my latest essay in a few days though - if you're lucky you might get to see the games before the end of term...
* If you think it looks suspiciously similar to the Bristol University website that I run, you're not wrong - theirs is run by an ex-student who did all the coding for both, and ran ours until this season.
** And second-highest junior overall. Remarkably, I've beaten the top-ranked, in a wild rapidplay game that turned out to decide the tournament.
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