Friday night:
My entry to our local congress is sometimes deranged by family visits,
but an expectedly free weekend allowed another excursion in Exeter’s
St.George’s Hall, now renamed the Corn Exchange.
[It’s about as big a hall as a corn exchange would be, but Exeter is a
wool town, not a grain one, and this unhistoric renaming of a post-war
building rather makes me wince. Not as much as the chess, though…]
I have played less this season, quite deliberately; I’ve been finding
evening chess very hard, and in October even lost to a club member graded
50 points below me, when our grades suggest I should win every single
game. But in the daylight, I was hoping for better things.
Click on […] to see games list.
1. Black vs de Piro (141) – win.
Well, the first one is of course an evening game, after a week at work
and an abbreviated encounter with the Junior Club.
Tristram joined the Exeter club for a year or so recently, and in many
friendly games I couldn’t rememeber him playing much theory, so I
chanced my arm with the main line, but found, to my horror, that he knew
it all backwards. I scrambled together some reasonable moves from bits
of half-remembered theory and analogy with the …Qb6 lines that I have
always played before, but got to a position which used to be the main
line, yet has since fallen from favour. Characteristically, Tristram
went for the attack, but soon had to give away a piece to save his
Queen. I wonder how easy the endgame would be; I liked the passed pawn,
but in the post mortem I couldn’t make progress.
2. White vs. Kazanov (210?) – loss.
What an unforgiving game chess is. After being handed a space advantage,
I didn’t find a plan to make use of it and was brought back to focus by
my opponent breaking on the King’s side. It was not clear whose King
was the most exposed, but after some swaps we arrived at an endgame.
Under pressure to reach move 40 in time, I chose an active, forcing move
which made life more difficult for me, even impossible, when a calmer,
stabilising move would probably draw. But my real irritation is not
making more of the good position from the opening. (Maybe h2-h4? But
that’s not my style.)
3. Black vs. Jepps (150) – win.
On the four previous occasions we have met, Gerry has walked off with
the whole point each time. He is my Kryptonite: he loves gambit play, I
hate it; he attacks very well, I defend very badly … I thought I’d
play a straight bat against 1.e4 and my opponent, rather than playing
some evil underground gambit, went down a main line of theory, hoping to
play the Alekhin-Chatard Attack. Finding himself in the unfamiliar
MacCutcheon, he found most of the right moves in the opening, but
mistakenly judged his Bishop worse than mine (fearing …c4), and
swapped it off, losing time, when I think Black must have at least
equality. The standard attack down the c-file seemed to work smoothly
enough, and Gerry’s attacking verve and tactical opportunism didn’t
surface.
4. White vs. Wilson (155) – win.
I got a nice game the last time I played Matt with White, and hoped
to repeat the same line, or something like it. But my opponent bashed
out a completely different line that I rarely see, and a search of the
memory banks returned a familiar result: 404 Page Not Found. Black
seemed to equalise very easily, and while I had the Bishop pair it
seemed both of them were bad! I couldn’t see what else to do but
instigate a minority attack and hope Matt faltered on the other wing. My
attack flowed well enough, yielding a pawn, then poor Matt missed a
sequence of cheap forks around the time control.
[I have something of a reputation as a theory hound, but this is clearly
quite unfounded: I read fairly widely, but my knowledge is as shallow as
a gnat’s bidet.]
5. White vs. Helbig (194) – draw.
I have drawn and even won against Paul Helbig, a strong South West
player, but the most common (and expected) result has been a loss. My
single win came about from this line of the Pirc, with which I’ve had
some good results. However, once again my opponent bashed out what seems
to be a simple equalising line with little hesitation … which I should
have expected, as that’s exactly what he did last time! I was beginning
to find my position sinking into rigidity, even the rigor of death, but
a good-looking Queen manoeuvre by Black was met by an even stronger one
by White. Black had to concede a pawn, but, as always with classy
players, found the most awkward way of doing so, and I could only retain
the pawn by swapping off into an opposite-coloured Bishop endgame with
slender hopes of a win.
Overall: This unremarkable performance won me the upper grading prize,
remarkably enough (AKA the ‘not bad for an old duffer’ prize). I came
away happier with the result than the games; I got caught out in the
opening too often, and was in moderate time trouble in nearly every
game. But I can’t complain, that’s my best tournament result for a
while.