A first time for everything

For ten days this month, I was back behind the information desk at the London Chess Classic - the culmination of six months' planning, and almost total focus from October onwards. I think it went even better than last year from an organisational perspective - our school activity days were full to capacity months in advance (entirely by schools taught chess by the charity, for the first time), the amateur festival went without a hitch and has basically outgrown Olympia now, and even the Super-GMs managed to play some interesting games. But on the whole, I have to repeat what I wrote last year: from the crow's nest you have almost no idea what's going on. Still, where else would you want to be in December?

Like last year, the only game that I played was in a simul. Twelve months ago it was John Nunn; this time I added Jon Speelman to my list of elite English GMs played. (Short and Sadler are also there - Adams, McShane, Howell and Jones still to go!) The simul was slightly under size at 16 boards, which obviously tilted things in Speelman's favour; I got less time to think and he could devote more attention to each game.

I wasn't really expecting anything from this game, having worked even more hours than last year even in the teeth of an all-out RMT/ASLEF strike: I could barely remember how the pieces moved by this stage of the week! Nevertheless, I was able to calculate my way into an interesting ending, before snatching an unexpected chance with both hands:

It's only a simul, but beating a Grandmaster for the first time is a nice thing to be able to tick off. I played Short and Hebden when I was much weaker, whilst I didn't really get out of the opening against Nunn or Sadler, so this was the first time I really had a competitive game.

The main point of interest for me in this game was 16... Qd6!?, which implies my pawn sacrifice on the following move. Firstly, I managed to quickly and accurately calculate a 9-ply line and then correctly evaluate it, which doesn't happen very often. But I also showed the courage needed to sacrifice this pawn. It wasn't necessary, but I trusted my intuition and went with what I felt was right. We will see more of this in the coming games. I haven't played a Caro-Kann as black for almost 18 months now, but it's still doing the business...

Like everyone else, I was running on pure adrenaline for much of the LCC, and the comedown since then has been a miserable cold which just won't go away. I had to make do with it throughout my usual end-of-year trip to Harrow for the London Junior Open, which I will now start to review. Before that however, the calendar is going to tick over into 2017 - so I'll take the chance to wish all my readers a happy and successful new year.