My attitude to blogging rapid games basically comes down to what I find interesting, but in the end I had enough that I wanted to discuss that it was easier to just annotate everything. The quality is conspicuous only by its absence, but I hope the day has some instructive moments.
For the first round I was initially paired against Ameet Ghasi, who is not only an IM but a rapidplay specialist. 'Waste of a white' was my immediate reaction. But the organisers were flustered by a very late entry, and instead of pairing him with the bye as they should have done, wasted 10 minutes redoing the whole draw. In the end, the task of taking on the newcomer fell to me: I was playing Charlie Nettleton (182), who I see at lots of tournaments but don't know anything about. I dredged up some very old preparation and got a nice position, but I let the initiative slip and was overwhelmed without much of a fight:
Then, since only one game in the first round was a draw, I got upfloated to play a different IM, Graeme Buckley (224). Our last game was at least a contest, but this time I had black. Despite equalising quite easily, I opted for a hasty plan, and after his mysterious 17th move I was left with very little to do:
Mercifully I was able to head off any memories of February in the third round. I played Nishchal Thatte (136) and achieved such a good position from the opening that my later oversights actually accelerated the win!
My fourth-round game against the ungraded Joseph Monk was an interesting strategic battle in the Closed Sicilian. That phase of the game went my way, but eventually things started to happen and from then it was only a matter of time until I did something stupid...
Round five was the second act of my quick draw with Nasir Rizvi (184) in April. This time, unfortunately, we played a real game! Rizvi went in for an exchange sacrifice on the grounds that "well, it looked quite interesting," and it turned out to be too much to deal with. Admittedly, my defensive efforts helped him on his way:
That effort earned me a bye for the last round - unfortunately the people in the field who I hoped to beat had either overperformed or withdrawn. So I was whisked all the way down to the bottom board of the minor and asked to play Toby Brett, graded 42. In the pre-blog days I beat his father in a Richmond Rapid U-135, but a lot has changed since then. Beyond that, I will only say that the reader can choose between getting the pain out of the way or enjoying it slowly...
It wasn't quite as bad a system shock as four months ago, since I was still suffering from a lack of practice. Still, I would have hoped to score more than 25%, and a performance the wrong side of 145 even with the help of the 40-point rule. I'm just lazy at this speed, and seem incapable of changing no matter how times I pay for it. As in February, I was seeing most of my own ideas (there at least, Chessity has come in handy) but continually overlooked what my opponents were doing, and what I was letting them do.
Though it's a pity to end my 2016-17 season on a sour note, it's at least better to get all of this out of the way now rather than at the business end of July, so I tried not to be too concerned. I've resorted to online blitz for the first time in a while throughout this week, and after a slow start I played a few nice games - hopefully something has clicked back into place. Having given CCF a miss yesterday, I will have to wait until I go to Bristol next weekend for the Graeme Thomson Rapidplay to find out. Before that though, we will jump from one end of the spectrum to the other: I have just wrapped up this year's county correspondence games.
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