Greetings from Dublin

Thurs Jan 28th

Here I am in Dublin for the Gonzaga tournament, played at the Gonzaga boys' school in a suburb to the south of the city centre. For any of you who don't know, I worked in Dublin for a couple of years and have some good friends here. I played in Irish tournaments before I started playing in Britain. In fact I've played at Gonzaga more often than any other tournament - this is to be my sixth time. And it could be my last. RBS are closing their office here, so all my friends will be dispersing, and Eoghan, whom I stay with , is considering leaving Ireland, so this could be my farewell appearance.

It would be nice to do well. I've never done as well as I would like here - I played in the bottom section for 3 years, always I think doing OK but not brilliantly. I still remember 2006 when I got mated from a completely winning position by a schoolboy - I remember his friends streaming up the room to congratulate him, as I trudged morosely from the tournament hall. Last year was a particular debacle - it came in the midst of my run of 11 defeats out of 12 tournament games, and I withdrew on 0/3.

Well, let's hope for better things this weekend. I have only played one league game since York, what with all the disruption from the snow. I played well in that game, only to resign in time trouble. I say "resign" rather than "blunder" because the blunder was the resignation itself. I had had a slight edge all game, as black, against a player rated much higher than me at 125. I was confident that I was ahead and seeing more than he was. But I was running a trifle short of time which spooked me a bit. I only had 5 minutes for 5 moves - not exactly Goodfellow-style time-trouble and no excuse to do what I did, which was to bang a move out without thought.

I attacked a Rook with my Bishop, only for it to move and pin my Bishop against my Queen. I could see no way to defend the Bishop, and so I resigned on the spot. When I got home and plugged the game into Fritz, I discovered to my chagrin that I could have got out of that hole by moving my Bishop to attack his undefended Queen - leading only to an exchange of Queens and an equal postion according to Fritz.

A somewhat annoying experience.

Well , here I am in Dublin and I have taken Thursday, Friday and Monday off work to allow me to acclimatise and also to fit in a good drinking session in some Irish pubs tonight with my former colleagues - with an entire day's recovery time before the chess starts tomorrow night.

Precepts for this tournament are to try and maintain my concentration, not move too fast, check for blunders and give the opposition problems to solve. Take a leaf out of Andy Murry's book - make them run around solving problems, which is when they are more likely to hit the ball into the net.

Right, I'm off to the pub.