"A tendency to be sloppy"

"[Intuitive players] get a lot for free, but they have a tendency to be sloppy. The areas they will usually have to work hard on are the areas that require accuracy - opening preparation, learning theoretical endings and, especially, calculation ... This takes a lot of work for intuitive players, as I understand way too well.

I sense the dynamic potential of the pieces well and have a good feeling for where I need to put them to create an attack. For this reason, I often obtained very promising positions, but also often failed to win these promising positions. You will find this pattern throughout this book; grand lay-ups and then the accuracy was lacking."

Jacob Aagaard, Thinking Inside the Box (Quality Chess, 2017) pp69-70

I nodded knowingly when I read those paragraphs. There have been many attempts to group players by type, but that was the first time I found myself mentally ticking off every single box. (Aagaard goes into more depth than this - as usual, buy the book!) It's nice to know that my symptoms and diagnosis match up, although it would be strange if I didn't have a good idea of myself after annotating nearly every game I've played for six years. Anyway, my second-round game is a worthy example of this sort of play. 

I was playing George Neale (149/1635) in a rematch of my final-round game at the Weald, but this time I was confident, fresh and well-prepared - and I had the white pieces, whilst he'd spent the morning playing in the U-14 Championship. This game was a bit different from our first meeting!

It's easy to be too self-congratulatory over a game like this: a bit of opening erudition, some simple developing moves and (eventually) some short-range tactical vision made it all look rather easy. As I'd hoped, my opponent didn't enjoy a messy game and didn't grasp the dangers of his opening play: White has a strategically won position by move 10.

However, more stubborn defence might have caused me to rue missing the Rxb7 idea twice over. I didn't even consider it the first time round - a piece was attacked so I retreated it. I had the same calculation problem as I did in my previous tournament: no effort to overcome any obstacles. On the whole my play before the big combinational bang was pretty good, but it's a shame I couldn't summon up the courage to play 11. Bc4, even though I was sure it had to be right.

It was hard to argue with 2/2 at this stage though, and since I don't analyse games whilst a tournament is live it did look like quite a nice game. Given what came before, it's amazing what two wins against 140s can do for your confidence! But after this gentle start came the real tournament: all but one of my opponents in the rounds to come would outgrade me, and the third round would be the first real test of my form.