Tempus imperator rerum

 Last Friday, I played in a rapidplay tournament - a form of chess that has been quite rare for me in recent times. It was run by a group called the UK Chess Academy - in short, the people who run the UK Chess Challenge. Though quick tournaments are fun, probably the only reason that I played was that it was being held at Wilson's School: a nearby venue and one guaranteed to attract a lot of players I know from Castles and elsewhere. Indeed, it was as much a get-together as a chess tournament for me, but you always forget that once at the board!

 Since this was going in for FIDE rating as well as ECF grading, I had some hopes of getting above 1800 for the first time (1797 going in). The time control was one I hadn't come across before: 15 minutes + 2 seconds per move, so extremely quick even for rapidplay. And indeed, the clock often made its presence felt.

 That was never more true than in my first round game, on board 2 of this single-section Open against IM Augustin Madan (214/2313). The headline is that I was better in the middlegame, and (after he blundered a won position away) even winning! But my technique and my nerves failed under the pressure of the clock, and I missed out. As ever for rapid games, in order to get them published with something like promptness, I've restricted my comments to the key moments:

 In the second round I played a very young junior, Robert Akeya-Price (98/1359) - a bit of a drop! Black in a Fianchetto KID, I have to admit I didn't really like my position out of the opening. But he made some strange decisions and despite my best efforts was able to convert the won Rook ending that resulted:

 The third round, against Lewis Lou (119/1513) was rather more convincing. He decided to play the black side of a Pirc against me - a difficult opening to play well at the best of times, and especially in rapidplay. It only needs a few mistakes in these positions to be lost, and black's end was rather painful:

 Then I found myself with black against Alex Golding (174/1687), who is 10 years old and a bona-fide prodigy - he won the evening blitz ahead of three IMs! After losing here to a finger-slip and in the blitz to time trouble, I wondered if he has the Indian sign over me - I consistently get good positions only to throw them away for no apparent reason:

 My next opponent is almost seven times as old! He was Dale Taylor (172s/1980), father of Adam who I've played a few times with bad results. This was my first game with Taylor Snr. and it was a very sharp one: I played very aggressively, and it was a tale of two sacrifices: after passing over the strong first one, I went in for the so-so second, missed the right follow-up and simply didn't have enough bits on the board:

 In the sixth round I had the white pieces against Andy Deng (39/-), one of the players from Wilson's who entered, like Lou. I soon found out he is badly undergraded (though when he heard that I'd said "there's no way he's a 39" he wasn't sure which way I meant it!) and got nothing from the opening. But this game filled up my quota of positional games for the year, as I was able to capitalise on his mistakes in a greatly simplified position:

 And finally, the last round against Prashast Vir (154/1619), another junior who I've struggled against in the past. This was a weird and wonderful game that started life as the supposedly rather quiet Closed Sicilian. My play was rather extravagant and should have landed me in hot water, but everyone knows that strange things can happen in the last round - in this case he put a whole piece en prise! Typically, I still managed to create difficulties for myself but got over the line eventually:

 Some interesting games, I hope the reader will agree. Having some fun was my main objective for the day, and in that vain it was nice to see many people that I knew even if the pairings always managed to keep us apart! Probably the highlight game is the first, when I feel justified in saying I should have beaten an IM, though all of the games were interesting in their own way. Only rounds 4 and 7 are obviously from rapidplay tournaments, and my exuberance got the better of me in round 5 too, but there you go. In analytical terms, my main disappointment is that I twice saw very promising exchange sacrifices (22. Rc7+! against Madan and 13... Rxe3! against Taylor) and rejected the obvious positional grip because I couldn't see a forced win. The cast-iron certainty that 5 > 3 is very hard to shake off. Above all though, and rather like the 4NCL Rapidplay (10 minutes + 10 seconds per move) the games felt a lot like blitz and the time control tripped up a lot of people. A two-second increment feels like nothing and only really exists to let you convert trivial things like the R vs nothing ending against Vir. With more, who knows what might have happened in the first round? But you get what you get.

 This was only half of the day - there was a blitz later on! I played and scored 4/7 again (not a single draw all day!), but there was no way I was going to try and reconstruct the games. The crosstable is here if you're interested. The next game to be blogged was a slowplay game, Castles' last match of the season in the CCF Superleague.