Bursting the dam

As much as those of us who've run teams like to think otherwise, captains rarely have much influence on the outcome. I have to say though that KJCA's captain played a blinder ahead of Sunday's match. Rather than letting me and James Golding feel sorry for ourselves after losing feebly on Saturday, he moved us both upwards to face titled opposition. I suspect it was really for the benefit of others, but we were so angry at how we'd played that we were up for the challenge.

Our opponents, also a junior team, were the newly-promoted Barnet Knights, and they looked handy: 206-209, 189-202, 188-206, 175-196, 198-205, 184-197, 178-168, 175-156. Unexpectedly on board 4, I had white against FM Andrew Smith (196/2170) and a point to prove - it was a year to the day since I'd last won a 4NCL game. After observing the centenary Remembrance we began at 11:02 and I set about ending the drought:

Yes, our 4½-3½ win (LLWWLDWW) owed everything to the two players who'd lost so badly not 24 hours earlier. Part of the fun is the knowledge that anyone in the team can beat any opponent on their day, and four points after two matches is a great place to be with more winnable matches to come.

My inner policeman never enjoyed winning a game so much, for I was starting to get exasperated by the absence of any instant win. With the benefit of hindsight, I approached the position wrongly at first. If you sacrifice everything at the altar of solidity then you will indeed get a solid position, albeit not much else; Black's position is fatally flawed because of its passivity, not because of any direct way to cash in my development advantage. It is very hard to defend a lifeless position when your opponent strings it out, and with 19... g5? the dam finally burst.

However, I can't honestly say I played very well in this game. I was far too scared of an attacking plan that could never work, hence my contrived efforts to delay castling. I paid no attention to Black's potential counterplay (11... exd4, 13... d5 or c5, 18... N8e6, 19... Ng5) and was fortunate that he didn't either. And I chose a bad plan on move 19 because I tuned out a good one. But if I can do all that and still beat an FM at the end of it then something must be going right!

It's now time for another lull, before I resurface for the London Chess Classic. I was hoping to play in the FIDE Open, but thanks to exams that isn't going to happen. Thankfully they will be done by the time the weekender rolls around, so I'll be back then...