Leading from the front

Unlike Castles, Wallington 1 had a decent start to the season. Though we were (unsurprisingly) knocked out of the Alexander Cup in the first round, we stood on 2/3 in the league, and our first match of 2016 pitted us against the team at the bottom of the table, Crystal Palace. I tried to cajole the team with thoughts of a win for 3/4 and a serious promotion push, but apparently the prospect of a long-haul trip to their dingy church hall was too much. Availability was at an all-time low, and it was a struggle to even get to 7 players - we were under 115 by board 4. Whilst it allowed me the small achievement of playing on board 1 for the first time ever, rescuing some pride was the best we could hope for, and indeed 0.5-6.5 was my target score beforehand. The grades (167-195, 153-183, 142-181, 113-e150, 112-155, 107-140, 87-131) made it obvious that we couldn't hope for much more than that.

I had black against Graham Keane (195), who has no games in the database but has recently jumped up after being in the 180s for a while - I believe he retired not that long ago. Anyway, I had to rely on local knowledge, which proved sufficient to (eventually) get a position I was familiar with. That was enough to secure an uneventful draw even with a silly slip near the end:

We'd have reached my target even with a loss, but it was still a massacre, 1-6 in the end (DLLLDLL). That effectively put paid to our hopes of promotion, but with a depleted squad this year you never really felt it was on.

I guess that 19th-century openings like this will always have their supporters, but it is easy to see why they aren't taken seriously any more - if even I can equalise with relative comfort, what chance do you have against someone stronger? White develops quickly, but the tension is released too quickly, and there's no life in the position once everything settles down. Black could even have been the one to press, if I'd found 10... Qf5, or avoided the lapse on move 15. True, White is probably OK either way, but in the end I had to show a little composure in the endgame to hold everything together. That done, a good draw was in the bank and my unbeaten start to the season was preserved.

 That run looked to be imperiled though when I accidentally found myself playing in the strongest evening league fixture in Britain. Then again, the suspense isn't really there since I suspect everyone already knows what happened next...