A lot to learn

 It's never taken me five-and-a-half weeks to blog about one week, but we are now into the closing stretch: the second weekend, and the penultimate round. For the first time in ages, the blogging queue is now into single figures, and I shouldn't be playing any more slowplay games until the British Championship. If I'm faster and more motivated than I am right now, maybe I can be up to date by then - but no promises...

 For round 8, I was playing Onat Topal - unrated, with an F-category grade of 173. That made it difficult to say how strong he really was, but since he'd beaten an IM in an earlier round, I was ready for a tough fight, especially since I had the black pieces and nothing to prepare for. My suspicion proved justified, as I was comprehensively outplayed:

 I have a lot of sympathy with the central thesis of Aagaard's breakthrough book Excelling at Chess, which is the best players - "real chess players" in Kasparov's words - always know where the pieces should go. Clearly, I have much to learn about this sort of position. Unfortunately, it's the price I have to pay for spending my formative chess years playing the sharper defences to 1. d4, which lack some positional foundation.

 I spent the early middlegame trying to play ...e5, so I'm satisfied that I knew Black should be aiming to return the pawn in order to complete development. And yet, I couldn't quite bring myself to do it! I should have played 9... e5, whilst 17... Nd4 and - especially - 24... Be6 would have improved on the game too. The position after 30. d7 sums up the game for me; I lose too many games as black with an undeveloped queenside. But beyond that, I really did not know where my pieces should have gone - ...Nbd7 instead of ...Na6-b4, ...Nh5 instead of ...Ne8(-d6), ...Nc5 instead of ...Nb6, and then positively inviting White to play 22. Bxf6. Still, chess is a learning experience - sooner or later, something will click, but for now the quieter treatments are still difficult for me to meet.

 Now there was only one round to go, and there was everything to play for: the rating prize would be awarded by score relative to FIDE rating, and that 1807 rating gave me a big head-start. But I would need to go for glory...