Forcing the pace

I certainly wouldn't have been able to guess my second-round opponent before the tournament - I had black against Conor Murphy (207/1995). A strong junior from Kent in my early days, he had long since vanished into the obscurity of occasional league games - in fact he hadn't played much since helping to end my last match for Sutton Grammar in disappointment. (Looking back, I clearly wasn't happy!) Nevertheless, there he was.

This game was another struggle in the ...c6 English/Symmetrical Grünfeld lines which I'm trying to make my own at the moment. They're solid, but it's an uphill slog to equality with few chances to go for more. At times I was close to solving my opening problems, but never quite managed it - once things started to deteriorate I tried to force the issue, which soon proved my undoing:

Once again then I must echo John Nunn's complaint about opponents who go straight for the little toe. I don't do myself any favours by sticking with this ...c6 stuff, but it will be a reliable and convenient line when and if I can get a grip on it. You always feel that you're within touching distance of a playable position! This time I paid dearly for missing the chance to develop my queenside; the delay gave White time to engineer the e4 push, which marked the failure of Black's strategy.

However, my reaction shortened the game unnecessarily. It's a bit of a Pyrrhic victory to have calculated another long tactical line, just as against Speelman. I was too attached to my efforts to admit that 19. Bc1 made it all a waste of time, and preferred to allow the zwischenzug rather than look for something else, comforting myself with a fantasy evaluation of the arising position. Above all, trying to play actively when my position didn't give me any right to do so was bound to end badly. 1/2 wasn't a bad place to be after the first day though, and I had already cleared two from the small group of 180+ players. I could come back for the next two days and see what happened.

In the event, the rest of the tournament presented an interesting paradox. Perhaps I've finally found some confidence from recent results, since I was playing more swashbuckling chess than ever - yet I still couldn't take that final step, and somehow ended up drawing all four games! The near-brilliancy of round three set the scene...