Back to the day job

 Sadly, you can't crush an IM in every game you play, and I soon had to wave goodbye to my gadgets and play OTB again. This was last Monday, away to Clevedon - another one of the teams we were targeting a result against, even in this season's more trying circumstances. Apparently it's a volatile business trying to balance colour sequences: somehow, someone dropping out shifted me from board 2 to board 5! But I couldn't complain of course - I got white again. Just like old times...

 The grades were 195-189, 171f-164, 180-175, 150f-178, 164-156, 123-U. To my wry amusement, this was the fourth time in five matches against Clevedon A that I've been paired with Paul Spiller (156). I suppose I shouldn't complain, since our post-mortems are always good fun and he will almost always take a draw, but some variety is nice too. My natural cynicism served me well though, for it was Spiller who I had focussed my preparation on. My latest attempt against the Scandinavian actually went fairly well - but even so, you have to take your chances and it only took one slip to throw away my big advantage. Indeed, in different circumstances I might have been in trouble:

 We lost 2.5-3.5 - WLWLDL. On our website, I pinned our defeat on the drawmasters being paired on an odd-numbered board: white won every other game. When I decided to offer the repetition, I didn't feel I had any choice but didn't like our chances on the other boards anyway. When it got back to 2-2 and a drawn ending I felt guilty enough, but even worse when we lost it. So often I get promising positions and then throw them away through a reluctance to pull the trigger (15. f5!) - and in this of all openings, white rarely gets a second chance.

 I have stated before my belief that white can get a plus against the Scandinavian only by playing really ambitiously - if black can develop in peace then his slight cramp is irrelevant, so the outcome can be ± or =, but nothing in between. This time, the interesting idea of delaying Nf3 gave me some chances, and I wonder if my improvised 12. Qe2 might not be better than the more usual Bh6. A few natural moves later, and the position after 14... Nd7 is a textbook 'critical moment' - white can no longer improve his position as much as white can, and should be looking for violent conflict whilst he is better-prepared for it. There's only one way to do it, and you might say that on principle that 15. f5 simply has to work! It's a move that calls for a lot of time, and whilst I did take a while, I saw pitifully little - it would have been better to either trust my instinct, or forget my fear. Unfortunately they are one and the same issue. Being a pawn down makes me even more fixated than usual on forcing moves.

 So a decent way to bring me back to Earth, but certainly a disappointment as we needed the points. After this we've had a bit of a break, and now have to run the gauntlet of the table-topping teams - starting with the surprise leaders Horfield A on Thursday.