A bit too simple

The period from January to March is usually when I play most regularly - I want to catch up with this blog but it gets frustrating playing games faster than I can analyse them. I'm very slowly making headway, and have the gap down to four games now - although two more lie in wait next week.

As it stands I'm a little over a month behind, for our next game was played on 21st February. This was in the Wallington club championship, with black against 156-graded Kavitha Appulingam. She is a steady and resourceful player, but prone to time trouble and unambitious in the opening. Since I'd reconstructed our September rapidplay game I had a bit of a preparation advantage, but even so I insisted on playing the same dull line again and didn't get very much. In the end it took one rash moment and my unsteady technique to reel the point in:

I still feel ambivalent about such simple lines, even if I keep getting results. It always looks so easy for White to make a few obvious moves and escape to a draw, but in practice it's rarely so straightforward. At the end of the day though, you can't really prevent White from equalising if she really wants to, and I tend to prefer sticking with safe lines I know and trust rather than trying unknown or even outright dubious stuff for the sake of a sharp game. It does make preparation a frustrating experience though.

The decisive moment of the game was 21. Nc5??, a very natural move at first sight but one which doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Having played such moves myself in the past, I'm sure it was the combined stress of the clock and having a position that is obviously almost equal but can't be forced. The temptation to do something at such moments is often hard to resist. After that, the main lesson is how, even when I was two good pawns ahead, it became difficult to untangle once I allowed White to play c3-c4xd5 for free, activating all of her heavy pieces. There weren't many immediate threats; I simply got bogged down and was very fortunate the game didn't go in a different direction on move 35.

My next game was in the CCF Superleague, again with black. (The game in this post was the first of six - and counting - in a row moving second, and part of a run of nine blacks in ten games, but I had a silly run with white a couple of years ago. These things happen.) At least this time I didn't have to worry about my opponent playing for a draw...