Dreary Doncaster

Friday 26th February
The Doncaster tournament took place last weekend and it turned out to be a bit of a damp squibb as far as I was concerned.
It was meant to be something of a gathering with Morgan Daniels, Dave Stephenson and Russell Goodfellow all playing. But at the last minute, Morgan had to pull out owing to other committments and Russell pulled out due to concerns about the snow in the north, even though in the event the weather was fine.
I, too, was feeling a bit under par because I'd only just got back from Germany. On the Thursday I had to get up at 4am for a 7.15 flight, then went to my parents' for breakfast, met my Sister in Oxfordshire for lunch and ended up in Nottingham to meet John Peach for a few gins and dinner. He cooked a very nice vegetarian curry, but it did end up being a 21-hour day and on Friday I was feeling somewhat weary and not really up for a chess tournament.
I drove home and went to meet work colleagues for the traditional Friday "lunch club" in the pub. Went home again and got a message from Dave Stephenson saying that he wasn't going to play the Friday night game either and would be there in the morning. It was dark, raining and miserable, so I decided to give the Friday game a miss as well and just have a night in and get tidied up from my trip. I 'phoned the organiser and asked for a bye in round 1.

Saturday, 27th February
Game 1 - boring draw
Things didn't start too auspiciously on the Saturday either. As usual, I left too little time for the drive, and also as usual there was insufficient parking at the venue. I parked on the street and arrived 15 minutes late. I was playing a bloke called David Scorer, who it transpires I had beaten 4 years ago in Nottingham.
I had to take another 15 minutes break to move the car since it was only on a 40 minute ticket, which also didn't help.
Clearly I have deteriorated since 2006, because I could only manage a draw this time. The game was pretty dreary and never really got going. A dull Gruenfeld, with me on the White side. He was higher graded than me, and so a draw was a reasonable result but it was very uninspiring.
When I got home and looked at the game with Dave, it turned out that I'd missed a tactical win towards the end. My cup runneth over.
Doncaster Congress is held in a large Victorian school near the town centre. Its a bit of a rabbit warren of a place, but I quite like it as chess venues go. One big plus is that there are adequate toilet facilities, so you don't end up with the noxious bogs you often get in chess events, which so often drive me to the local pub.
Even though Russell wasn't playing, his friend Nigel was there. And even though Morgan wasn't playing, his friend Nick was. There were other readers of this 'blog playing there too - Brendan O'Gorman was plying his trade as usual in the Major section, and Peter Brace was in my section. I think this was the first time that the potential existed for me to play one of the 'blog readers, but Peter had a rather better tournament than me and so it didn't happen.
However, I did learn one of the drawbacks of being the author of a popular 'blog, which is that you attract rather more attention than you might like. Several people wandered over to watch my game from time to time and it really wasn't worth watching.
I had lunch in the pub with Nigel and some other people. Nigel is a sound man and we had a good chat about this and that. There were some other people there whom I don't know, including a very strong player aged 77 who hails from the Netherlands originally. He lives near Hull and knows Dave so we had a chat. He was clearly a sound man - he said he always enjoys a drink or two before and after games. He grumbled that Dave never resigns early enough, costing him valuable pub time!

Game 2 - Poor
I can't even think of a subtitle for this one! I was playing black against someone rated 122. I was going OK until I blundered, just when both Dave and Nick were standing there watching. I lost a rook for a bishop and then 2 moves later blundered away my Queen. At least it was a quick affair so I could spend a couple of hours watching the other games, and having a beer in the pub with Nigel.
Once Dave's game had finished we headed back to my place. He followed me back, and grumbled a lot later on about how slow the route was. We went and got an Indian take-away and went back to my place and went over the games. I struggled to stay awake. Dave ate a huge pile of Tandoori mixed grill.

Sunday, 28th February
Got up and drove back to Doncaster. Dave kindly drove us both so that I could have a beer or two. He grumbled a lot about how slow the route was - this from a man who had driven home so slowly last night that I had to keep slowing down so he could catch up behind me!

Game 3 - Uninspiring win
Well I did contrive to win my first tournament game since York, after not winning any games at Gonzaga or Kidlington, but it wasn't anything to be proud of. My opponent blundered a pawn in the opening, but then I got bogged down and he came back into the game, taking advantage of an open c-file, until he made a bad mistake later on and allowed me to win a large amount of material. The result was all down to mistakes by him rather than any credit to me.
Went to the pub for lunch with Dave and Nick.

Game 4 - Benko against a blind player
I got back to the venue to find I'd been drawn against a blind player. You might recall I'd had a game against a blind man at Grange-over-Sands. It's quite a tricky business, because there are two board to keep in sync and you have to call out all your moves using the phonetic alphabet. It feels more like a collaberative effort to get all the paraphenalia working properly more than a competitive game.
At Grange, I won fairly easily but this chap was a different proposition, a student at Sheffield University who turned out to be a solid and competant player. The game was a Benko and he took an unusual line - after taking the a6 pawn he played e3 before Nc3, changing the nature of the positions quite a lot. I think it's a good line for White and posed me a few problems. I offered a draw by repetition, which he turned down. I started to get more and more tired and generally not in the mood. Dave, who came and watched as is his custom, said he'd rarely seen someone looking less interested at a chess board! The position was fairly dull and drawish, though I felt he was having the better of it. Eventually we got to the time control and he said he'd take the draw because setting his special clock back was too much of a faff.
Apparently, he'd drawn all 5 of his games.
Had a nice chat at the end to Peter Brace who had also had a draw against the bloke I played in the last round. I told him that I'd thought he must be a chess coach, because he always seems so knowledgable and full of good advice for others.
I ended my campaign with 1 win, 2 draws and 1 loss. An uninspiring performance. I have had tournaments with worse results than that - plenty of them - but few where all my games were as dreary and boring as this one. It's probably because I was tired before the start, after the travelling and long day I had on my return from Germany.
Dave ended with 3/5 which is pretty good considering he was in the open section. Had a beer with him and Nick, then went back to my place. Dave enjoyed the tandoori mixed grill so much that he had another one and I opted for a prawn bhuna. We went through some games, but I was really struggling to stay awake. In fact I think I did nod off at the analysis board, which somehow summed the whole tournament up.

Grand Prix news
One bit of good news which emerged this week is that I am lying second in the under-120 Grand Prix section. This is a table of performance across all tournaments. Your best seven tournament results count towards points. The system obviously rewards people who play in a lot of tournaments, but its still nice to be lying as high as 2nd.

I'm on 472 points (dont worry about how they are worked out), a long way behind Alan Fraser who is on 615. He must play in every tournament that there is; last year he topped the "most games" list. I played him once, at Coulsdon last year, when I lost after being ahead, in what was a particularly disastrous tournament for me. I'm back in Coulsdon over Easter, so maybe I will get a chance to level the score with him and eat into his lead in the Grand Prix standings.