Still alive

 So, the London Chess Classic is over. I worked 134 hours in 11 days, and today was my first day off since 29th November. Funnily enough, despite being near the centre of it all I have very little idea of what happened! It seems to have gone very well though, even if the main event took a while to get going. With the highlight of our year done, hopefully things will be a little quieter for a while. At any rate, once I get to the end of this week I have a fortnight off - and a chance to attack my ever-increasing backlog on this blog.

 I'm now more than a month behind; this game was played on 11th November, for Castles in the Croydon League against Streatham B. We had a stronger team this time, and were very closely-matched on grades: 171-185, 168-167, 134-132, 125-e125. I was on board 2, against Martin Smith (167). We played a wild mini-match in the Stoneleigh Trophy a few years, when he unearthed an incredible swindle only for me to immediately return the favour. This was another very sharp game, but strangely it feels like much less of a contest...

 For Castles, the wait would have to continue - we were closer this time, but lost again by 1½-2½ (WLDL). My long wait for the white pieces was over, but it spelt no improvement in my results. Hedgehog positions are notoriously difficult to play - black's position has a lot of hidden energy waiting for the moment when white overdoes it. Viewed like that, my 14th move was very naïve, showing both impatience and a lack of understanding of the position. 20. Nxc5? was not much better. Yes, black played a good game and won prettily, but I made it too easy.

 I still hadn't won a slowplay game without theoretical assistance since my London League debut. What you really want at such a time is a rest, and a chance to mull things over, but of course I had no such luxury. Five days later and it was back to the board.