Just a shadow

In the final round I was given what should have been my best chance to win a game, white against Stefan Voilescu-Holvad (132/1605). When I saw the pairing I immediately started rummaging through ChessBase, which only made my former colleagues on the information desk laugh at me - "if you can't beat a 130 without preparation then you need help!" Actually I was planning to experiment a little, and against the expected Taimanov Sicilian I was ready with the modern and very popular 7. Qf3 line. We'll never know how that would have gone though, for the game quickly went in another direction.

Although it wasn't my worst result this was certainly my lowest point of the event, for I played consistently badly at every stage of the game. I forgot what little theory I ever knew, put my pieces on all the wrong squares, curled up into a ball whenever Black did something active and mangled the endgame beyond belief. Somehow I still managed to split the point, but it was a hollow triumph:

Probably the only lesson to take from this game is that playing whilst you are on such bad form is unlikely to make things any better. As John Nunn wrote in his Best Games, all you can really do is wait it out. There were no redeeming features - if I had been steamrollered that would have been bad enough, but I kept on almost getting back into it only to stumble, and that is even more depressing. The result took me back under the 2000 mark, and as things stand I have a mountain to climb if I'm to get back again.

I suspect that at least some of the precipitous fall from what came before - even ignoring the British Championship, I beat a 209 and a 196 in two of my last three games before this tournament - is self-fulfilling prophecy. Having real life to contend with surely makes things harder, but it's a fairly common handicap after all. I have not forgotten how to play at ~2300 strength in a few months; I just need to find time to play a little more regularly again. Leaving home this month and starting my next accounting papers shouldn't be a problem then...

January has in fact been a fairly active month so far by recent standards, with two games under my belt and a third tomorrow. Even if things hadn't been so disjointed I wouldn't have written a half-year review - as I concluded last season, there isn't enough data to be meaningful - so let's keep straight on going to the 4NCL in Daventry last weekend.