Luckily even I have a dribble of common sense, and I decided not to try and learn it all in ten minutes. Instead I decided to accept the lessons of the day before and aim to minimise the tactics. A rare day off from 1. e4 didn't really work, but my overall approach was crowned with success:
As little as I could do in those ten minutes of preparation time, they weren't wasted: you can learn a lot about opponents just from their opening choices, and playing Dragons and King's Indians rather gives the game away. It's useful to be able to outplay people from dry, equal-at-best positions - I am fondly reminded of this game from a few months ago. I didn't have any plan beyond improving my pieces, but that was enough; ironically it was my opponent who fell foul of a simple tactical oversight.
Then again, the English remains nothing more than a surprise weapon to be used sparingly; I don't have that much of a feel for it, having never studied the positions very carefully. My plan of rapid queenside expansion was inappropriate, allowing Black too much freedom in the centre. Even after avoiding the worst, I made things hard for myself on moves 17 and 18 - it was only Black's mistaken desire to trade heavy pieces on move 19 that kept me out of danger. Since I could easily reach a mirror-image position from the Sicilian, I have to say it's all a bit concerning!
That left one more round: with a good result I would be on for the grading prize, and a chance to whinge about British Championship qualifying tiebreaks. But I was going to have to get over a mental block to do it.
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