My opponent was John Sugden, who it seems went to school with Ray Keene. Unlike his notable contemporary, Sugden struck me as quite a swashbuckling player, with some impressive scalps even in recent years. The glaring weakness, however, was that I had the white pieces and could target some ropey opening choices - and my prediction came true: by move 12 he had a resignable position. But from there it turned into the most paranormal of my efforts in Llandudno:
After the game, a friend playing in the Championship complained quite bitterly about the lack of a rest day (having spent 15 minutes concluding that ...Qa7 instead of agreeing a draw would have won on the spot, before realising that there were pawns on a7 and b6, not a6 and b7) - I suppose that I got one, but it would have been better not to take it in the middle of a game!
I can only attribute this farce to a total nervous collapse. Everything went swimmingly until I saw the ghost of some counterplay and never managed to stabilise myself. You get a horrible cocktail of thoughts running through your mind: how stupid you'll look if you don't win this, how good your position was, all the lines you rejected despite knowing they were good, how bad it would be for the tournament situation, and again how stupid you'll look if you don't win this. I remember reading an article a few years ago about why so many golfers choke at the business end of the major tournaments - it's because when they get nervous they start to think through all the motions they can normally do in their sleep.
There doesn't seem to be any point analysing the chess content in this game; the second half of the tournament was all one big psychological lesson which I will wrap up at the end. At the time, too, I did my best to forget about this game, come back the next day and go from there. But it was still a sleepless night.
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