Gregory

I played Ian Gregory in the club championship last night, he's rated 146, which is equivalent to 1980 FIDE. I lost in about 24 moves each. I haven't got internet access at home yet due to the house move, so can't post the pgn. I was white and he played the Centre Counter, or Scandinavian defence depending on what you know it as. It went something like 1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Nf6 3. Nf3 Nxd5 4. g3 Nc6 5. Bg2 ...

I wasn't very comfortable playing against the opening and just tried to play the standard Kings Indian Attack against it. He put a bishop on g4, pinning my knight against the queen. I've been encountering this a lot and haven't been dealing with it. Fritz says I should have played h3 a lot earlier, but I was wary it was weakening the king protection. Instead I weakened my d3 pawn by playing c4, the idea was to release the queen but it made a mess of the position and he just piled on the pawns towards the pinned knight and broke through.

I haven't been playing online since last week due to no internet access. I tried playing chessmaster and fritz, but lost interest as it just isn't the same. Instead I've just been practicing tactics with 'Chess Tactics for Beginners' software and 'The mammoth book of chess'.