Back on song

I can't help noticing that recently I have become a little paranoid about being mentally prepared to play. The results have been good, but that way Fischer lies, and it is hardly possible for an amateur to control these things. So, leaving aside the questions of self-belief raised in the last post, it was important to show myself that I can play well even in a setting I didn't welcome. That included a Saturday game at the 4NCL for which I had to leave home at 8am; as I mentioned last time, if you want to prepare and also to eat then it's a tight schedule. But availability left me with no choice.

The Downend team was under orders to treat this as a training match; it made no difference to our place in the relegation pool, and our opponents, The ADs, would be strong. They were caught by a quirk of the pool system, whereby you only carry forward points against the teams in your half: with their points scored at the top, if they got to the promotion pool they would probably go up, but if they were in the relegation pool they were going down! Sure enough, we were faced with a hefty grading deficit: 214-211, 198-211, 206-215, 181-208, 175-198, 175-186, 179-186, 177-176. I had white on board six against Mark Stockwell (186/2024) - and the database couldn't tell me anything useful, which at least solved one problem. Actually we got a sharp line that I'd forgotten the details of, but I was soon able to redirect the game towards my kind of position and it all ran smoothly:

 So I can play on Saturdays after all! I still haven't been persuaded to play right through a weekend, but with 3/4 and a 212 performance to date that policy must be under threat whether I like it or not. Although our 4-4 draw here (LWLDDWDD) was academic, it was a necessary boost after a difficult February weekend. Even so, we need 2/3 in the final rounds, so the pressure's on...

 The game itself, whilst outwardly very calm, was a bit of a rollercoaster. As I sat thinking after 15... Ne5 I feared something horrible, but my very next move was a good practical solution if nothing else, even if I initially came up with the logic for it more out of hope than expectation. Once the game was reduced to putting pieces on good squares I had no problems, and only delaying Ke3 risked blotting the copybook. And this time there were no stupid one-movers; whatever I did differently before the game apparently worked.

 Hopefully then I can keep up this return to form in the next game. But that's not for a little while - at the end of the month, back in the CCF Superleague, after which things should start to get busier. Until then...