The recovery begins

The previous game might be excused as casting off the rust whilst submitting to the ritual first-round slaughter of the innocents - but by round two we were definitely off and running! By now I felt more anticipation than apprehension. My gut instinct when I saw my pairing for every round after the first was "hmm... yeah, I can do him in," so something must have clicked. That said, my second-round pairing wasn't actually that easy - Black against John Garnett (178/2010). I played him in the Bristol Winter Congress in November, one of my worst tournaments for a while, and it didn't go well. At least I could do my homework this time, and get my surprise in first for a change. Although it wasn't the sort of game that I hoped for, his approach meant that he had to be accurate to keep up his faint pull, and he couldn't manage it:

Getting something on the chart just calms the nerves - I didn't manage that at King's Place until round 4! - so I was happy enough with an easy draw as Black against a stronger player, especially after what happened in November. The King's Indian gets a run-out at my hands very rarely now, and I only chose it here under quite particular circumstances. Just as in the good old days the results were mixed; as things turned out, I neutralised White's pressure quite easily, but a closer look shows that I was very naive to think straight afterwards that I'd figured out the problems correctly. Going for ...b5 simply shouldn't work here - ...e4 has to be right here, and I could sense it, but as usual I was scared of a committal decision. I also underestimated the danger posed by White's play, and I could have been embarrassed by 14. Ng5, or 20. Qc5.

But I don't think that any good can come of analysing games too closely in the middle of an event (I did little more than a blunder check) so I remained blissfully ignorant, and happy with my play. The natural progression for round 3 would be to win with White!