Rapidplay rollercoaster

  Attractive chess events around London have been cunningly front-loaded just before I return. Last weekend I missed both the King's Place Rapidplay and the Weald Congress, but at least Bristol had a substitute. The Graeme Thompson Memorial Rapidplay was at an old Clifton venue, the Polish Club; a flash-back to cold first-year nights under those flickering strobe lights. I've glossed over rapid chess in recent times - the quality is rarely good, and my own play is conspicuously weak. But this was a peculiar event, and I have time, so I present all six games, reconstructed and annotated in full, sans scoresheets.

 I played Jerry Humphreys (179) in round 1 - not only my 4NCL captain, he is also doing the very great kindness of giving me a roof at the moment, so an interesting start. Not for the last time, I played fragments of a good game, but couldn't put it all together:

 But I was not too disappointed, and especially not after I overcame David Collier (181) in a bizarre Trompowsky:

 However, I'm often derailed by just one bad loss, and the seasoned IM Chris Beaumont (208) happily obliged:

 Even with a playable opening, my fourth-round game against FM Nick Frost (167, if you believe F-grades) was not much better:

 Then came the penultimate round, in which I played James Hennefeld (156). I will only say that confusion reigned until the very end; I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise...

 Finally I played Roger Hardy (159). This has a fair claim to be the stupidest game of the lot, but when the dust finally settled, I converted an endgame with surprising conviction:

 Even accounting for my traditional pre-chess insomnia attack, there was some gloriously bad play on show. I was more dispirited by each mistake, and was on the point of disintegrating by the end. Interestingly, my play here (and at Downend) was much wilder than usual, which I regard as bad. Coherent long-term strategy is unfeasible at this speed, when it is hard to keep control of a game - when there is no order on the chessboard, there is an irrational tactical skirmish instead. But I need lots of time to figure out tactical positions, and miss the most banal things if forced to move quickly, so my play suffers disproportionately.

 Psychologically, much is of interest. I was unsettled by the end of the first game: a decoy sacrifice to set up a Knight fork is the one combination I usually spot instantly. And I was so close! In any other line, black's position would collapse within a few moves. Later, in round six, I blundered repeatedly to get an endgame with merely an edge (and a pawn!) before converting it with no drama whatsoever; suddenly I felt really confident in a purely technical position, having eliminated all tactics from the board. But the game really demanding attention is the fifth one.

 "All records of excitability were beaten by one Moscow player [who] once during a time scramble became so excited when his opponent made an unexpected move that he started shouting 'Controller, come here, quickly - tell me which colour am I playing?" (Krogius, Psychology in Chess). My game may be in the same league! I think it was a perfect storm of panic: a sudden attack, my opponent's dying seconds, and a totally unexpected move, the sort that I always reflexively judge as instantly decisive. With over 2 minutes, I certainly had time to find ...Rxd6, but I was too shocked, and unable to countenance the possibility that white had simply put a piece en prise! Resignation was (obviously) not a considered act in this case. A desperate tale, but fascinating nonetheless - maybe now I will actually read the book I just quoted!

This was a very odd tournament: quicksilver brilliance but much that I would rather forget. Still, 2015-16 is now officially off and running, and with my highest rapidplay performance (163) for a very long time. I now have just one more chess event in Bristol - the third week of the Downend Summer Quickplay, to be played on Tuesday.