He who lives by the sword...

County chess is no longer what it used to be, but the Southern Counties Chess Union's 125th anniversary was worth marking. Famously described as the organisation that exists to tell people about what's happening in the ECF, it's still an influential voice which is directly responsible for a lot of chess in southern England. To mark the occasion, they organised a grand-scale match between the South and North of the Thames - the aim was 125 boards, but they had to make do with a mere 68.

As a Surrey man I flew the flag of the South, and by chance I was playing Chris Fegan (176) - who, as the Chief Operating Officer at Chess in Schools, is also my manager at work! Whilst his is not the most universally popular name in English chess, to put it lightly, he looks after CSC's staff well - as you would expect from a long-time servant of the Labour Party - and I am fortunate to have had my first workplace experience under him.

Anyway, onto the game, and I'm afraid there's no getting around the fact that it was a disaster. After winning a clean piece on move 21, I had to resign on move 34. But I only had myself to blame:

Ouch.

I have a two-stage explanation for this fiasco. Firstly, I had my usual nervous struggles: it took me a long time to settle down after winning the piece, and I made a string of irrational decisions between moves 20 and 23. As usual in these situations, the outcome was that imagined counterplay was made real. Then I finally stabilised, started playing active moves again and... got overconfident! With me, nothing is easy. Once I started to imagine mating ideas of my own - which seemed the logical outcome of Black's play - I stopped taking his ideas seriously until it was much too late. I even got a late chance to force a queen swap and rejected it.

Since this game, as we will soon see, it has been one missed opportunity after another - I just cannot tap into an empty goal at the moment! But that has always been one of my calling cards, and after games like this you wonder if you'll ever be able to cure it.

After this less than ideal warm-up, the real league season got underway a week later. This season I'm planning to stick with my reduced weeknight schedule, although with Wallington back in the second tier of the Surrey League I may be more in demand. Castles aren't playing the Surrey cups any more, but our CCF Superleague team is still going and it was there that the action started for real.