A pity draw

Sunday's match, now formally in the promotion pool, was against Cambridge University - a team which notoriously almost never fields any current students. I suppose I'm not the best-placed person to poke fun at it though, so let's just say they looked quite handy: 210-221, 196-230, 201-201, 190-197, 188-198, 176-202, 177-173, 147-134. I got a lower board and another white, on seven against my ex-Drunken Knights captain Nevil Chan (173/2016).

This was a rare outing for one of my pet lines, and not much more auspicious than its last appearance. I was under orders to win this game, but I soon had to forget about that and was grateful that there wasn't much of a game at all:

Not a great day for the team either in the end, but we pushed them most of the way. The final score was 2½-5½ (LLDDLLDW) and frankly my game felt more like a loss, since I was given something of a pity draw.

I think the variations lost in the notes illustrate that this line has great potential. Interestingly Nevil, like Hanreck before him, seemed to tacitly admit that he already knew it, and that if you play this Black you count on White not being aware of 5. gxf3!?. A glimpse into the mind of a Nimzowitsch player, perhaps. But White puts the onus on himself to play energetically and precisely: two things I am struggling with a great deal at the moment. From move 11 I failed to look ahead, content to coast on intuition - once I saw 12... Ne7! I understood what was going on, but too late then - and I still missed the ...Qe6-f6 idea. The correct plan for White is shown by 10. f4, I think: h2-h4 isn't as deadly on its own as normal, but still plays a big part by encouraging Black to weaken g6 with ...h5. Then it's up to the f-pawns to do the real damage. Maybe I was a bit pessimistic about my chances; easily noted but not so easily cured.

So on the drought goes. After this I took an unusual step for me these days: I entered two rapid tournaments in the space of a week around the Easter holiday. Whilst they were a bit up-and-down, they were a useful reminder that I can still play chess.