Bouncing back

 Relaxed or not, it's obvious that the conclusion of my first game back was not what I had been after. But thankfully I only had to wait a couple of hours until my next bite at the cherry - I was also filling in the evening tournament. Interestingly, I was given a half-point bye for the first round, which seemed to hint at employment to come - though this almost gave me the wrong colour!

 After establishing that the computer's attempt at my pairing was wrong and getting the colours reversed, I ended up with white against Barry Miles (121/1533). Of course there are all sorts in the chess world, but he is certainly one of the nicer people I've come across - he was one of the lower seeds in this event but seemed to be on fine form, scoring 11.5/15 across all four tournaments whilst losing only to me and a pair of 180s. That said, I imagine their victories were a good deal more convincing than mine: some energetic opening play allowed me to win a Rook almost immediately, and yet I still gave myself a good deal of work in order to bring home the bacon:

 Alekhine's great gift was apparently his ability to provoke complications at will without taking undue risks. I have a poor man's equivalent - in my games complications can spring up from any position, but not necessarily when I want them! On balance I think this is probably a good thing (certainly from a neutral's point of view) but it can certainly get in the way sometimes. After bagging the Rook white could and should have closed things down with the simple 14. Qe2 - instead a combination of perfectionism and lazy calculation meant that I sacrificed my g-pawn and had to walk my King up to d2. In the end it worked out OK, but black was given some unnecessary opportunities (cf. his 17th move.)

 From my point of view, despite being aware of the problem and working on it, good calculation doesn't come about overnight. It's not so much a case at the moment of missing one-move tactical ideas (the disappointing exception being the ...f5 resource after 17... Kxb6) as simply not bothering to look for them: I have the habit of stopping my calculations too early. Thus I didn't analyse 14. Qe2 at all ("my Bishop on f1 is stuck") and looked no further than 16. Qxd3 Nxc2+ ("black gets his Rook back.") It's a blindingly obvious statement, but you can't see things if you aren't looking for them! When I was forced to find the right moves to extract my King from the danger zone I could do it, but I was a bit too casual after getting a won position so quickly. Chess is a hard game and we have to put in effort at the board, not only away from it.

 In any case, it was a relief to finally win a game - the first one since my last game of the previous grading list, so a wait of almost two months! I had the afternoon tournament off on Wednesday, so I could focus my efforts on the evening in search of something even more elusive - a win with black.