Winston Churchill
The morning of the final day gave me white against my fourth and final junior opponent of the tournament, Alfie Onslow (189/2022). I played him at a Richmond Rapidplay in April and was doing well until I got overambitious; with five times the time on the clock I was actually feeling pretty optimistic for my second attempt.
Ironically, the extra time proved to be my undoing. I used too much time trying to solve a position I should have just known, so that when I overcame some turbulence to reach a winning position I no longer felt willing to chance life on the increment:
"Solving all my problems right now and then polishing off the rest in 5 minutes" as I put it in the notes always sounds like a great idea... it's just those last 5 minutes which always turn out to be the problem! The more time you start with, the harder it is to adjust to playing at blitz speed, and as the bad memories stack up I'm getting more and more cowardly about it.
Hopefully this game was a good introduction to a popular line of the Taimanov, even if its popularity has waned recently. The Ne2-g3 plan is worth remembering, as is the insignificance of sacrificing a pawn to open the h-file when I have a pawn on g5. Black paid a high price for missing his chance to get ...d5 in, opening the centre to meet a flank attack as per every strategy book ever written. After that the attack plays itself, right up to the point when I offered a draw! Those 18 minutes spent on move 23 are my biggest regret of the game. I had too many options, and even the trivial detail that one of my pieces is defending a mate in one contributed to the background panic.
Deferring the fight to the afternoon round meant that I now had to face up to another demon - my miserable score in significant final-round games.
No comments:
Post a Comment