A shot in the arm

The second round put me right down at the other end of the room. But it was an even bigger come-down for my opponent, Pardeep Bahra (174/1881), who went from a GM on board 1 to one of his former Bristol University team-mates. He's hardly played for a couple of seasons now, but I remembered him as a very dangerous player on his day.

For me, the big problem with competitive chess is that losses hurt more than the wins make up for. So I think I have to savour the rare occasions when I hold everything together for a full game (aberrations from the logical course of events occur most of the time) since the result is usually of a reasonably high level. For me in particular, keeping morale up is very important, and so this game came at just the right time:

I should point out that I've just bought a new desktop computer, and that means I can run a modern engine again without risking life, limb and hard drive. I'm not sure it always helped though - even 3400-rated monsters make some bizarre suggestions!

Anyway, this game shows the flip side of my very form-based play - I've been demonstrating for much of the season so far that I can lose to anyone on a low, but when the wind is in my sails and I have a position I like I can be close to unstoppable. The sudden confidence can only have come from getting to a structure I like and knowing that Pardeep was trying to feel his way in the dark - combining 8. Bg5?! with 10. O-O-O proved to be a costly experiment. But when you think you know what you're doing, everything seems simply automatic. By no means did I play perfectly, but White hardly mustered a threat all game, and only the over-elaborate 16... Qb8 seriously endangered my advantage. The cute finish was an added bonus - like I said, it's crucial to enjoy games like this.

For the next couple of months, at least (hindsight is one benefit of blogging so slowly!) I was to be a player reborn.