When nothing is working

There's a pattern at the moment - I'm playing two games a week, but only publishing one. That's a bit of a problem since in seven days' time I'll be starting a weekend tournament! It's always hard to revisit disappointments though, and there has been no shortage.

 Three weeks ago, on Halloween, the Surrey U-180 team kicked off its campaign in the Southern Counties regional stage. In these parts, the regional stage is a serious competition in itself, and my historical score is excellent. A slow time control and a weekend game was exactly what I wanted, and this seemed like a particularly good chance to put things right. Our opponents, Sussex, could only muster 10 players for a 16-board match, and were down on strength - on board 6 I was playing Paul Selby, graded 156. The chance was certainly there, but somehow went untaken:

 The best that can be said is that Surrey won, 11½-4½. One win from our last two regional matches should qualify us for the ECF stage, and then who knows? My contribution was not an impressive one.

 I had a won position straight out of the opening - I don't see a good antidote to 5... Nc6. But that was work from a past life, since I analysed the line in the summer. Things started to go wrong once I reached the uncharted seas of the middlegame. I'm being brutally punished for laziness at the moment (and I even warned myself when annotating the game against Simpson!) - 12... Bf5 is an automatic 'develop every piece' move, but the more concrete 12... Nf5 is devastating, and I didn't analyse it. The very careless 27... Rff6? put an end to my winning attempts, and it arose because I stopped thinking about the possibility of white's c-pawn advancing. Even worse was 21... f5?, simply throwing the e5 pawn to the winds. I should not be making such mistakes at this time control, and I very rarely do. Maybe it is just tiredness. In evening games I have found myself struggling in vain to force myself to think, but the laser-sharp focus just isn't there at the moment.

 Thankfully, a bit of alert psychology got me out of a hole, and I escaped with a draw that in the end I didn't really deserve. I was obviously disappointed, but at least I was on the scoreboard again. The next game, back for Castles in the CCF Superleague, was a chance to build on the momentum.