Ghosts of the past

After the car crash at the SCCU, I did at least get the second half of the Wallington rapidplay to recover my bearings (see the post before last). But it wasn't long before my next serious game, for Castles in the CCF Superleague. Trapped again in the top division, I'm still our second board* but can still expect plenty of tough games.

For the first fixture we were playing The Luddites, who have more depth than us and finished highly last season - 187-187, 180-184, 117-175, 99-143 were the numbers we were up against. I had white against Amardip Ahluwalia (184/2045), a reversal of colours from the same fixture 12 months ago.

Sadly, I hadn't forgotten that game. This effort perfectly illustrated the downside of being a momentum player: when you encounter bumps in the road (such as getting mated a piece up in your previous game!) it can be very hard to get back up to speed again. After some shaky opening play by both sides, Ahluwalia chose a poor plan and really should have been punished for it.

At some stage I have to give up trying to figure out what's going through my head in games like this. Drawing with white against someone graded 4 points above me is not worth sacrificing such winning chances for! But I hate losing so much that it clouds my judgement. Up to that point I'd had some good ideas (13. Re1! is the standout for me) as well as some bad ones (9. Ne2?! and 16. fxg3?!) but the game had mainly been pushed along by my opponent's panicky reaction to being attacked. Having headed for an opposite-wing castling game that was bound to favour me from the start, retreating into his shell with 17... Nb8? and 20... b6? only made things worse.

I said enough about what came next in the notes, so I'll conclude only by saying that the two main takeaways for me were my failure to grasp just how good my position was once Ahluwalia started burning bridges, and also how pessimistic I was in the opening. The first phase of the game is my territory, and being caught out there is very unsettling, even if I can at least play reasonable moves in that scenario these days.

After this it was more of the same, even if the team result was different. Wallington's fortunes appear to be slowly reviving, and we celebrated our return to the second division of the Surrey League by also entering the main knockout competition, the Alexander Cup. If the club has a reputation it's for mediocre results but the occasional massive upset, and on this occasion we hit the jackpot...


* Our top board has reached his highest grade ever at 62! We have a friendly rivalry going on and it seems to have helped us both a lot.