Final-round games: blessing and curse

In the final round I was paired against Gavin Lock (202/2155) - a nasty upfloat, although I had the consolation of a third white in four games. When I started annotating this game it occurred to me that I've been giving some challenging last-round pairings recently, but actually I haven't done so badly; perhaps there is less pressure, or my opponents have already switched off a little. Certainly, this game is the sequel to my final-round game at the LJCC Open. By a strange quirk, it completed an identical run of results in both tournaments: first-round win, second-round loss and draws in all of the remaining games. It showed that I've made some progress since blinking against Gallagher, but I still have a long way to go:

I daresay that one day I will have to read beyond the introduction of Levenfish and Smyslov's Rook Endings, which still sits almost untouched on the shelf behind me. There are always so many other things to work on! Although it was a simple oversight that cost me the win in the end, technique is the ability to convert a position as uneventfully as possible, and by that measure I had gone wrong long beforehand - 39. Rxg4?? the most glaring instance.

The thing that I find really strange about this game is that Lock is very familiar with this good knight vs. bad bishop ending - and so he should be as a regular French player, since it's the fundamental aim of White's entire opening system. But he didn't seem to know what to do! He went for a sluggish plan on the queenside with no real teeth, and allowed me to crash through on the kingside unhindered. I find it amazing that he never threw in ...f6. Perhaps it demonstrates that the positions are harder for Black to play than you might think - certainly harder than the engines think! - but also, if more evidence was really needed, that 200s are as vulnerable as the rest of us. Tenacious defence or not, he needed a lot of help to get away with it.

So mixed feelings once again: I'd prepared relatively thoroughly for this tournament, and whilst it was definitely a step up from recent games I still showed my usual weakness in positions with lots of concrete things going on, or where my opponents refuse to co-operatively lie down. At least I managed a small gain in rating points, and mid-180s seems to be a fair reflection of my ability at the moment. Under the circumstances it's probably good that the event was not a British Championship qualifier - if it had been then a win here would have done it, and goodness knows how I'd have taken that.

Next came my last league game of the season. Although Castles did enough to secure their place in the top division of the CCF Superleague some time ago, there was still pride to play for as we took on the second-strongest team in the league.