Playing to the gallery

 Despite losing their grip on the title, Clifton have got their C-team into the top division, such is their strength in depth. Then again, the team has proven a bit of a punching bag so far* and last Tuesday it was our turn to take them on. Again shorn of some of our top players, I found myself shunted up to board 3 for only the second time - the first did not go well. Still, we clearly had the upper hand: 195-167, 193-164, 164-152, 150*-145, 150f-U, 155f-130. My 152-graded opponent was Mark Dirnhuber.

 I was confident that the game would be a Dragon, and wasn't objecting to this - what better way to draw attention to your board?! At the risk of sounding boastful, I was relying on my memory to prepare again - a game I had sat next to two years ago. But again, I was lucky - the line he plays appears in John Nunn's Grandmaster Chess Move by Move, where he convincingly takes it apart and summarises the theory to boot. Black played a known inaccuracy, and his attempts to sacrifice his way out of trouble failed. Even with my technique, black's position was too far gone once the dust cleared:

 At last, two points on the board! 4.5-1.5 (WDWLWW) was even a bit harsh on us. My game was certainly not the smoothest of our four wins on the night, but probably quite representative of my practice: heading straight down the sharpest line available, preparing it very deeply, and emerging from the opening with an advantage big enough to withstand my subsequent poor technique. For technique comes with precision, and at the moment I have neither; in these circumstances I think it makes sense to play for wild positions where the chance of landing a hammer blow is that much greater. Plus, of course, there is simple vanity: when the new players ask what sort of player you are and you reply "1. e4, Sicilian, King's Indian... bit of a hacker basically," you've rather set out your stall! Historically it's been a joke with some truth that the only qualification to play for our A-team is that you have to hack, but for some reason it was down to me to uphold our honour on that front this time.

 On a more sober note, it's astonishing how much I was afflicted by nerves in the second half - not only my usual adventures once connected passed pawns appeared on the board, but also once black embarked on the desperate 19... Bxg4?? - blinded by mating threats that weren't really there, I missed seemingly every possible way to refute black's play! It's ironic really - you'd think that to play the openings I do it's necessary to have no fear at the board, but that's certainly not true in my case. Sometimes I have to try and forget that Penrose suffered a nervous collapse at the board and had to move into correspondence chess...

 Speaking of which, chronologically my next games were not played over-the-board - this year I played for Surrey in the County Correspondence Championships, and the games finished quickly. I have another league game to come, but first the story of how I beat an IM twice over by playing like Tal...



* In fact, at the time of this match none of the Clifton teams had any points yet, which made for a very strange league table! However, Clifton A were in the process of exacting revenge against South Bristol A on the other side of the room.