Leicester part II

The Hull Congress is now in full swing - well, round 1 was last night and Colin is here staying, but needless to say, my journal is still out of date and I have to finish off the story of the Leicester Congress.

Game 4 - Pyschological tricks
I didn't sleep too well. It was still raining when I awoke on Sunday morning. Daniels and I stumbled to the venue. As I had predicted, I was playing the other bloke on 3/3. He looked like a boxer and was very aggressive in approach. He clicked the bones in his neck before we started and he gave me a very firm handshake. I was surprised, however, that his chess didn't seem as incisive. The game was a fairly incipid Queens Gambit Declined, and before long he gave me a tactical opportunity to exchange Queens and then win a Rook for a Bishop. My King was in the middle of the board, but I had a significant material advantage. He used his minor pieces to harrass me, but then he missed another simple tactical motif and I won his other Rook for my other Bishop. So now I was two exchanges up, which is quite unusual. All I needed now was to consolidate the position and exchange off the remaining pieces to win the game.

At this point, he started doing some very strange things. He laughed out loud to himself a few times and started talking to himself. He got me a bit rattled and I did let him get to me a bit. He managed to pin one of my Rooks against my King, but he didn't take it immediately and kept checking. I was able to get my King out of the way. At this point, I was completely winning. He said "I'm going down swinging". He sat staring at the board for ages and then he said "Ah, there is always a way" and then played a move, which turned out, on later inspection with the computer to be rubbish, but it still forced an error from me. When he'd seen that, he shouted "Yes!!!" and banged his piece down on the board really loudly.

Peter Brace, who was sitting on the next board, looked up irritatedly and asked him to be quiet. I showed no reaction. I played on for a bit but was clearly lost and the game was soon over. I had lost a game I had been totally winning, mostly because of his psychological tricks. Something to watch out for in the future. I can't pretend to have been happy about it, since my chances of winning the tournament had gone up in smoke.

Daniels and I went for a walk and bought vegetable samosas for lunch. I went to a bargain shoeshop and got a half-price pair of Grensons.

Game 5 - anti-climactic draw
After all that excitement, the last game was always going to be hard work and so it proved. It was a c3 Sicilian and he played the opening a little loosely and offered me some chances but I got a bit carried away and moved my Queen rather too spiritedly into the middle of the board and was forced to back-pedal for a bit. I used up half my time on the first 11 moves. The Queens came off and things quieted down.

I was still discombobulated after the morning's fiasco, and at one point, wanting to take his Knight with my Bishop, I actually managed to pick up the wrong Bishop, which couldn't take his Knight. As he pointed out, I was now forced by the rules to move the piece I'd touched. This could have been a serious problem if it put me in a bad position, but fortunately I was able to get away with it all right. Shortly after that, he offered me a draw which I accepted. In the end I got 3.5/5 and won a £30 grading prize, but that was somewhat disappointing after being almost on 4/4 and heading for a possible tournament victory.

Daniels' last game went on and on until he and his opponent were the last board playing. There were a couple of arbiters hanging round the board and some spectaters. The clocks were running down and down. Daniels eventually had 1 minute, his opponent had 2. Daniels was looking stressed as usual, with his hands in his hair, but his opponent appeared totally insouciant and calm as his clock went down and down. He calmly moved and wrote his move down. Daniels moved. His opponent just sat there, and his time ran out. Daniels pointed perplexedly at the clock and the arbiter said that he'd won on time. The opponent couldn't believe it. He thought he still had 20 minutes to be added on but the arbiter pointed out that the game was over. It was 6.30 and the game and tournament were over.

Daniels said "I feel awful about this" and asked if he could retrospectively offer a draw, which was very gentlemanly - he could have just taken the win on time. The arbiter said he could - it didn't affect the tournament, and so that was what happened. The opponent was not very gracious about it, which annoyed Daniels somewhat.

That was that - another tournament over. Daniels and I went for a quick pint with Peter Brace before going home. He had a long wait for his train back to London. Peter lives in Nottingham and so I followed him back to the M1.