All at sea

 Though it was not where I'd hoped to be, 2/3 is still not a bad score to be on. Nevertheless, if I wanted to end up in the prizes it would be advisable to put my foot down in the fourth round, and this time I had a closely-matched opponent - the 155-graded William Phillips.

 With my Queenside openings experiment coming to an end, I was aware that this would be my last game for some time with 1. d4 - frankly I couldn't wait to see the back of it, and this game will show you why. I insisted on playing the Trompowsky once again, with the result that I got a position I neither liked nor understood. The reader can guess the outcome.

 In my two earlier black games I benefited from a solid understanding of the position; here we see the other side of the coin. This sort of chess is simply difficult for me - having to sit around and not compromise the position any further goes against my instinctive desire to always do something. Consider that starting from move 10, eight of my next ten non-forced moves were inaccuracies! Even when black undid much of his work with 14... g5?, I quickly fell into a bad position again.

 As I made plain in the notes, I don't have much faith in the Trompowsky any more. When you have 0/4 with it, you can't be surprised. My kind of chess can only work from a dynamic start-point (I will elucidate in my commentary on round 6) and that means an end to lazy, 'get-the-pieces-out' lines like this one. But as round 5 will show, that in itself is not always enough...