Disappointment at Gonzaga

Saturday 30 January

Game 2 - walk-over

Eoghan gave me a lift back to the venue on Saturday morning. After the session and late night on Friday, I was feeling very delicate. We got to the venue 15 minutes late, so I was resigned to being behind on the clock, but luckily my opponent had not shown up either, so I was fine. I didn’t really feel up to playing though, so was very grateful a bit later on when the controller came and told me that my opponent had defaulted the game and so I got a walk-over and a full point without having to lift up a pawn.

I watched a few of the other games for a bit and then Eoghan and I got the LUAS (tram system) into town. We went and had a look at the collection of 17th century books in Archbishop Marsh’s library at St Patricks Cathedral, met our friend Alice at her jewellery stall and then went for lunch at a vegetarian restaurant on Wicklow St, which does very good meals – I had a Thai green curry.

Game 3 – settling for a draw

I was feeling a bit better than I had been in the morning, though still tired. I was drawn as Black against the no. 2 seed in the section, a young chap of around 20, rated 1560. Under the circumstances, I didn’t much fancy my chances, though I cheered up a bit when the game followed the Benko Opening main line, since that is one of my favourite Black openings. For one thing, the system has a ready-made plan and you don’t have to give any thought to how to pursue the middle-game. Also, I’ve played and read a lot about it and am quite comfortable in the positions arising.

The game went quite well and soon I was a pawn up. However, I started feeling very tired and found myself missing things – one time, my opponent uncovered a Queen attack on my unprotected Bishop, and it was only after a good minute or two of thinking that I even saw it. I realised that sooner or later, I was going to blunder, and so thought I would take the opportunity of a superior position to offer a draw. He thought about it for a moment, and then accepted – he was behind, after all.

We went and had a bit of analysis of the game. I don’t mind doing that after drawn games, even though normally I don’t do post mortems since too many opponents see them as an opportunity to show you how clever they are. He was a nice bloke though and we had a good chat.

Amazing game on another board

I went and watched the other games. Phillip Maguire, the bloke from Wicklow who beat me in round 1, was involved in one of the most amazing games I’ve ever seen. He was playing another bloke I know, a self-taught bloke who doesn’t believe in using books, and is regularly outside the tournament hall smoking roll-ups. Maguire blundered a Bishop shortly after the opening, and so decided to throw more material in, in a desperate last bid to win by flushing out the enemy King. He sacrificed another Rook and so now was a Bishop and Rook behind.

His opponent was evidently quite affronted that Phillip wouldn’t resign in this situation. There did seem to be some counter-chances for Phillip, but not perhaps enough to justify the loss of material. Phillip told me he was considering resigning, but then the opponent started getting visibly annoyed, huffing and puffing and rolling his eyes and this made Phillip decide he was going to play on to the death and make him work for victory.

Because the other bloke was annoyed and rattled, he started making mistakes in what was a sharp tactical position, with both players short of time – and soon Phillip found a tactical way to win the other bloke’s Queen by combining a fork and a pin. Now, Phillip was ahead on material with a Queen, Rook and several passed pawns against two Rooks, a Knight and rather fewer pawns. Both players were short of time, Phillip more seriously. Phillip kept checking him, and eventually found a way to Queen a pawn. He could have at one point ensured a draw by sacrificing his Queen for the other bloke’s last rook, leaving him without sufficient mating material. In the end Phillip lost on time. The other bloke only had 2 minutes left. The large crowd by now watching the game broke into a spontaneous round of applause.

Well, that deserves a much fuller description than I usually give my own games, because it was considerably more interesting than any of my own games!

Eoghan came and picked me up. We went back to his flat, where he laid on a nice dish of stir-fried prawns, and we watched Big Lebowski and some episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm – as we always do.

There was a Saturday night game but I took a bye. I don’t like playing chess on Saturday nights. There are more important things to be getting on with, like drinking red wine!

Sunday 31 January

Game 5 – depressing loss

I felt a lot better than I had the day before, and turned up at the venue (on time) in rather better fettle. I was still reasonably well-placed thanks to that walk-over, on 2/4 and I thought if I could manage two wins then it would still be a respectable result.

I was drawn as White against Dennis Dempsey, an older gentleman who I drew against three years ago despite having some winning chances. I knew that he was not an attacking player and that it would be a dour battle. We were soon in a fairly dreary variation of the Queens Gambit Declined. He made no blunders but also no particularly threatening moves, retreating Knights to the back rank and the like.

I started to get a bit restless and wanted to try and drum up some activity and force the pace. I centralised a Knight, defended by a pawn advanced to f4. He took the Knight and I retook with the d-pawn. I had hoped that this would give me attacking chances but it had the opposite effect – I was left with weak pawns and as soon as he saw the chance, he sprang into action and had soon won a pawn.

His pieces were still unco-ordinated and in some cases unprotected, so I tried to exploit this to get the material back. Unfortunately I rejected the plan that would win a pawn back with something that I thought was stronger – but didn’t analyse properly , probably because I was annoyed with myself – and was soon worse off than ever .He had connected passed a and b pawns, still a pawn up, and with most of the pieces swapped off. He forced his pawn all the way up to my 2nd rank, but he also made some inaccurate moves and I was able to get the pawn eventually. As is often the case in such situations, I had had to make compromises elsewhere to get that pawn, and was comfortably losing. By now we both had less than five minutes on the clock, and he now blundered the exchange by allowing me to attack his Rook and Knight with my King.

I was back in it – the computer later assessed the game as even – but he had four Kingside pawns and I had less than 2 minutes on the clock, so it was soon over.

An annoying game to lose. It can be very hard to combat these players who “stodge it up” in the words of Dave Stephenson, though it must be noted how he sprang into life when I gave him a sniff of a chance. Afterwards I talked to another local friend, John Maher, who said that Dennis has been around for years, always playing at a reasonable standard, and is known for playing passively until the opponent blunders and then playing well to win games.

I went to the pub and had a Guinness and an Irish toastie and soup (tomato).

Game 6 – battling draw

In the old days I would probably have withdrawn at this stage, but I fought on – recently (Bury, Scarborough) I’ve had some of my best wins in “dead” games at the end of tournaments.
I was playing a young boy with a fairly low rating, but I saw that he’d already had some good results and was obviously one of these fast-improving juniors. I was Black and played a Sveshnikov. He didn’t know the opening, and misplayed it, allowing me to isolate and double two pawns on his c-file.

The centre got closed up, though, and I couldn’t take advantage of this weakness. The board was full of pawns and it turned into a dour, manoeuvring game. He advanced his Kingside pawns, but I had plenty of defence. It felt pretty even throughout, and eventually he offered me a draw which I accepted.

I watched the last few games and then headed back to town to meet Eoghan. We went to a new beer keller and went though the games, and then back to his flat where we got a Chinese take-away and watched Sideways, for the umpteenth time.

Conclusion

Overall, a disappointing tournament. Won 0, drew 2, lost 2, bye 1, walkover 1 – overall score 2.5/6

My target was 4, so it was a below-par tournament. I didn’t even play all that badly. I only had 4 games, played OK in 3 of them, the Dempsey game being the exception. I never recovered from a miscalculation in the opening of round 1. Once again, I lost in round 1 – something that regularly plagues me. My record in the first round over my last 15 tournaments is something like 25%, and I didn’t win a single one of them. This can only be psychological and I need to find a way to address it, because losing in round 1 gets you off on the wrong footing from the word go.

This is the 6th time I’ve taken part in this tournament – my longest record at any chess event – and I’ve always performed disappointingly. Some tournaments just never seem to give you any breaks. In the Under 1600 section, in 4 times of competing, I’ve scored 2/6, 2.5/6, 0/3 and now 2.5/6 again. In antother depressing statistic, that makes three Irish tournaments on the trot (Gonzaga 2009 and 2010 and Galway 2009) without a single won game. My last win on Irish soil came at Galway 2008.

On the positive side, it was an improvement on the truly abysmal showing last year (lost 3, two of them inside 20 moves) and withdrew. I did play pretty well most of the time, managed a draw in a favourable position against a much higher-rated player, and didn’t resign early after my blunders in games 1 and 5.

It was, outside the chess, as ever, a good weekend in Dublin. Plenty of sound drinking, eating and DVD evenings with Eoghan and my other Irish friends.

The next tournament is coming up straight away, at Kidlington, near Oxford, next weekend. I hope it will be a chance to make amends, though the section I have to play in is a tough one. Colin Fell will be playing as well, which will be sound.