Black is OK!

Eagerly hurrying off to a Richmond Rapidplay almost as soon as I got back from Llandudno was perhaps an odd thing to do. But there didn't seem to be much point sitting around feeling sorry for myself, and I did seem to be on pretty good form, so it was a welcome chance to push some pieces about.

Despite my rapid grade plunging to 152, I entered the Open - 'otherwise everyone will think I was losing games on purpose'. But thanks to British Championship fatigue and a clash with the UKCC Terafinal, numbers were down and they had to merge. I didn't actually play anyone from the U-160 section, but it made me eligible to win it!

At the moment I seem to have settled on only blogging edited highlights of rapid tournaments, and this time I'm going to show my three games with black - the three interesting ones! I started with another episode in my long-running duel with Robin Haldane (195/2027). For once I was able to refute his hackery, and achieved a completely winning position within 20 moves. So perhaps this was a moral victory to offset my heavy minus score, but after all the pain at Richmond I had nasty visions after letting this one get away:

The second round was a cagey draw with Joao Santos (172/1975) in a Petrov; he works at Chess & Bridge so I see him every day at the week, and in the end neither of us could stomach the thought of losing to the other. So onto round 3, and black against Tim Joslin (166/1813). Losing to him set off a tailspin to 0/6 in February, but it had taught me that a messy game would play into my hands. So it proved, but after missing my chances I needed a lot of luck to get to 2/3:

Quite often I fail to recover from going for lunch in a one-day tournament, but not this time: I finally managed to beat Nasir Rizvi (185/2005) in the Nge2 anti-Hanham when he fluffed the move order and lost the exchange for nothing. Whilst I was then ritually crushed by FM Jovica Radovanovic (211/2217) it still left me with 3/5 ahead of the last round - so I only needed a draw against Ian Deswarte (168/1812) to secure the U-160 prize and £100 with it. I didn't want a draw though!

I don't think that I played very well here, but then I said the same about my visit to Bristol in July and I performed in the 190s there too. Rapid chess can never be error-free, although there is no excuse for blowing a won king and pawn ending at any speed. I was punished for playing a little too quickly in that game. I did have some good ideas against Joslin and Deswarte, and though it wasn't worth showing here I was happy at holding off Rizvi's increasingly desperate bids for counterplay.

More importantly, this was the second tournament running in which the chips were down in the last round. This time I dug in, found a way to fight back and somehow even won. I felt confident about my chances even though everyone outgraded me, and that self-belief can make a huge difference.

From here it was on to the massively strong Drunken Knights blitz APA (I lost to Cherniaev, Bates - but only just - Roberson, Wall and Pein, scoring just under 50%) before another blitz at CCF. The highlight was of course John Nunn putting a piece en prise for my first one-on-one win against a Grandmaster, but actually it made me a little sad. Nunn has always been one of my chess heroes, and to beat him like that made me wonder about the nightmares waiting for me if I'm still playing in my sixties. All that action meant that when I faced an IM in a simul on Wednesday, it was already my 12th titled opponent of the season...