Just one slip

 I was surprised to see that last month's tally of 9 posts was the highest since February 2013 - not bad given that I was revising for my year-end exam in May! This won't be quite such a bumper month, but I do have a fair few games to play. The first of them was played on Monday, in the first round of the CCF Summer Cup. I was in the U-2000 section (actually U-169 to meet the conversion formula, which meant that no-one in the section was rated above 1880) and noted with some amusement that I am the median age in the section! I must be getting old. My first opponent was one of the six juniors in the section, James Golding (143/1665). Having lost to his younger brother Alex three times already there were perhaps pairings to inspire greater confidence, but he is improving at slightly less fantastic a speed so I hoped it would be a tough fight.

 Preparing for the tournament, I had noticed that a lot of people in my section play the Sämisch Variation of the KID as white - and this seemed a good occasion to finally buy my first ever (!) opening book, namely Attacking Chess: The King's Indian Volume I by David Vigorito. This certainly meant that I knew a lot more about the Panno by Monday evening than I had whilst on the train home from Bristol on Friday - but the line in this game isn't in the book! There's always room for one's own research.  White made a few instructive mistakes and I built up a position I was quite happy with - only to ruin it with an elementary oversight:

 As Vigorito remarks in his introduction, "compared to the classical openings, the price of each move is quite high and a mistake by either side can easily lead to disaster." Too true! Ironically, when looking over my opponent's games earlier on Monday I noticed that he had made more than a few strange tactical oversights even in his very recent games - perhaps I had been too smart for my own good here, since I was too quick to judge 13. Bxg7 a blunder and chop off on c3 - usually if you think the opponent is being an idiot then it's you who is missing something simple! After forgoing the chance to exchange on e2 and so simplify by tactical means, black's defence was at best very difficult. It's amazing how long the engine takes to wake up to this - as anyone with experience of Kingside fianchetto openings knows, losing your fianchetto Bishop but letting the opponent keep its opposite number is a positional catastrophe. After working hard on calculation recently, at least I was able to see all the many wins that white had after that! Like his brother, my opponent played most of the game at warp speed but this time it's quite understandable - white's game plays itself unless black is vigilant. Black can gain an awful lot by playing like this, but he also demands a lot of himself to carry it off. Seeing more accurately down the line is useless if you can't see what's actually on the board though - quite why I had such a lapse I am not sure. The c3 and g7 squares seemed so far apart...

 It's quite a shame, since I rather liked my position up to that point. Vigorito seems to treat 7. Qd2 as a bit of an obscure sideline, but this isn't the case in my experience since no-one has been interested in the more positional treatments. Everyone has just tried to blast me off the board, and it must be admitted that this has often been quite effective. Still, white's play seems a bit simplistic - he takes on a lot of responsibilities by rushing to trade off his own good Bishop, and the Bd3/Nge2 maneouvre gives black a lot of potential counterplay. Sadly the burden of proof is on black. The other main peculiarity of the game is how both sides constantly incurred Fritz's wrath by maintaining the tension between the dark-squared Bishops. In sharp positions it's worth trying to economise on tempi of course, but black in particular is playing a dangerous game by doing this. Usually it seems that ...Bxh6 is the way to go, decentralising the white Queen, but there are - of course - exceptions.

 Not the start I'd been hoping for, and next week I only get a draw by default (I am back to Bristol for a few days to get exam results.) Actually I'm glad that I don't have responsibility for pairings, since white scored 4.5/5! My next game will not be round 3 of this event though, since I am playing for the Surrey U-180 team in the national stage of the Counties Championship the day before. I will be back at the keyboard soon after.