A small confession

 Now that it isn't April 1st any more, I must make an admission: I didn't write the previous post. Well, not all of it - the background information was by my hand, but not the commentary to the game. That was by my loyal reader Alex Hardwick, who suggested that he annotate one of my games and see if anyone noticed. No doubt there were more amusing practical jokes doing the rounds, though for the most part the chess community was sadly uninventive.* Maybe it was a bit too subtle, but then again maybe not - just three variations and two ?!s all game was a big clue... 

 Originally my plan was to leave it at that, and then post my own annotations. But I was really interested to read over what Alex wrote. We're of similar strength but seem to have ended up with rather different views. So, as I give my own notes to the game, I can't help but annotate the annotations to some extent as well:

 He won't thank me for telling you this, but once upon a time Alex was a positional player - and maybe that still shines through in his confidence in black's minority attack. It's a good plan, to be sure, but they don't win by force! There are some other places where our positional judgements are at odds (8. O-O and 11... Be6, for example) but I have a significant advantage in that I actually played this game, and Alex doesn't usually play this sort of opening. That said, I would advance the same basic narrative - white ambled around passively, got positionally outplayed, but by surviving to the endgame ensured that it would all turn out OK for him in the end. Neither of us really believes in the Barry Attack either - although I am even more sceptical about white's hacking chances. I'm told it's fun to let go of one's realism sometimes...

 As I said above, I wrote all of the non-game content in the previous post, so I won't repeat myself here. But I will expand a little bit on the meltdown at the end. Looking at the BUCA games, I thought it was pure inability to play fast, but I am starting to think it is more the associated nerves - that might explain why, for example, I have had some useful scalps at blitz, where not even I care about the result that much. There should be no coming back for white with the clock situation as it was at move 35 (especially since he was gifted 15 minutes he didn't deserve!) but I froze as soon as white started getting active. At least, for the first time in a while, I managed my clock sensibly. I keep saying it, but I am looking forward to the summer when I should have time to address the issues.

 Anyway, normal service will now be resumed. If I am fast then maybe I cut the board-to-blog lag to under a month - the next match for us was against the defending champions, South Bristol.



* Although I almost fell for this one, buried away in CCF's weekly news e-mail:

 "Some FIDE rated tournaments now involve a security check on entry to the playing hall to combat the threat of cheating amongst other things; many of you will have recently read the article by former member and Grand Master, Danny Gormally, who believes that cheating in chess is out of control.  As you know, we at CCF want to be ahead of the game and are considering suitable checks on mobile phones to fall us in line with FIDE events, but equally want to remember that this is a club where everyone (we hope) attending are friends.  However, we are currently looking at fitting metal detectors into the doorframes where players enter the hall with the intention of identifying players with mobile phones so we can check to see that they are switched off and in view of all other players (to ensure no possible accusations can be made).  Anyone who objects to such security searches is welcome to register with us for our proposed self-certification system where players will sign a form confirming that their mobile phone is switched off before entering the playing hall."

 One day, I fear, we won't be laughing about it...