As I said last time, my recent form has been highly demoralising. The strength of opposition means that the performance is probably OK, but to me this is meaningless. As far as I'm concerned, I'm consistently playing well above 164, so I should be aiming for corresponding results. At the time of this event, I'd won only a single game in the calendar year, and none in the evening leagues since October. These events were single-section Opens. It's immensely valuable to get as many games against strong players as I've had lately, but your confidence wanes when you stop winning, and I have always been psychologically fragile. This was a chance to rebuild, and I think it worked very well.
The games I've chosen are not of the highest quality, even accounting for the time control. I didn't have any games like that to show even if I wanted to! (Maybe that's why I play little rapid chess nowadays.) But they do have one thing in common: I won them all in crushing fashion. The value of that, as future posts will show, is hard to understate.
The first game was the penultimate round of the rapidplay event. After a safe 2/2 start I had a middle-order collapse and was now on 2.5/5. I had white against Daniel Gliddon (120), who is on the CCF staff. The Ruy Lopez is usually a quiet opening, but black managed to acquire a positionally-lost game by move 10, and the rest was a logical conclusion:
My game in the following round, black against the 144 junior Francesco Bernardini, was my third Queen's Gambit of the day. It was a nice change to take up something new and immediately make it work (I scored 1.5/3, which is OK against a 168, 162 and 144) although my lack of feel for these positions showed. White simply dropped material, and it is only a cute finish that makes this at all noteworthy:
Finally, in total contravention of the Nezhmetdinov Rule, I offer a game from the blitz. Of course the quality takes another dive, and this time both sides misplayed the opening, but it's been too long since I gave the French Defence a proper duffing up. My latest battle with Paul Jackson (149) was just as brutal as the games above:
Reading over my commentary, I am a bit worried that it all sounds very matter-of-fact - 'I do this, this and this, and then his position of course collapses'. Maybe this is what you get with wins - I can't say I remember! But seriously speaking, I have noticed that the strongest players I know all have a bit of a swagger, bordering on arrogance in some cases, and I don't think it's a coincidence. It often seems a bit unpleasant to me, but I am sure it does them a lot of good. I am held back by a lack of self-belief, so sometimes easy wins can be helpful. Just don't expect to learn much from them.
These tournaments were quite reasonable given that I don't do so well at quick time controls - I won all of £8.50 as a grading prize, my rapid and blitz ratings should both creep up by a point or two, and I can still hope to edge my rapid grade back over 150 in the next list. We'll see; I'm not sure when the next event will be, although I hope to play a lot more quick chess next season. Before then, it was back to slowplay and the winding-down of the league season, first in Surrey.
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