"The human element, the human flaw..."

This post could have been published yesterday. But yesterday Viktor Korchnoi died, and I could think of no worse affront to the great man than to mark his passing with an 18-move draw. Korchnoi was the ultimate fighting player, and the determination to keep going for so long at such a level is simply awesome. It seems fitting that he scored his victory over Carlsen by flagging him on move 40 in a drawn endgame! Perhaps his games are not the most spectacular, but he was the proof of his own remark that chess games are decided by "the human element, the human flaw and the human nobility." I have much to learn from his attitude to chess.

And so we come back to the Colin Crouch Celebration Chess Congress, and the fifth round. This time I was playing another teenager, Harry Grieve (187/2106). We had met once before: I had white in a sort of KIA, built up an overwhelming attack, but overpushed it and got caught on the rebound. That was five years ago, so ancient history for both of us - but at times I am cursed by my eerily strong memory.

The daily preparation battle was, I must say, one of the easier ones of the tournament, since Grieve plays the Levitsky Attack, 1. d4 d5 2. Bg5. When I was switching to 1... d5 I looked at all of the sidelines in some detail, and I had been waiting for this one to come along. Everything went to plan, I refuted White's opening outright, and... well, that was all.

It was this game that I had in mind more than any other when I wrote that my first-round loss defined my tournament. Despite three consecutive draws with 2100s, it is obvious that my self-confidence had been shot to pieces. The hasty trade of queens, the creeping doubt as I pondered his audacious draw offer, and its eventual acceptance, all point to this. I find it hard to accept that I truly believed my king to be in danger throughout the game. Admittedly, I didn't understand the position completely; my plan of 'development' with ...Bd7 and ...Na6 is more of a box-ticking exercise than anything constructive. Nevertheless, I had an extra pawn and a positional advantage, and I should have dared myself to bring the game to its logical conclusion. But that's impossible when you expect the sky to fall down at any moment.

I do wonder if all of these short draws are partly because I have an unhealthy interest in the opening phase. But I took satisfaction from proving my point in the opening: 2. Bg5 just looks wrong to me, and whilst Black's response is even more offensive, it certainly works. It's always been my philosophy that you should make sure to know the anti-theory lines better than their perpetrators, to drive them out into the open of mainstream theory, and for this day I had done my bit. Sort of.

Whatever else it was, the sixth round was certainly a bloodier game.