I had a very enjoyable time yesterday at the Derbyshire Rapidplay tournament, held at my home club Spondon. There was a good turnout, over 70 people. I turned up early, in case they needed help setting up etc. All the boards were already setup, so I was asked to man the table where people pay their entry fees and any late entries turn up. I felt so important :)
Because of the quick rate of play, 30mins each, most people including me didn't keep score. So my recollections may already be skewed. Round 1 I played Peter Ellis who used to play for Rolls-Royce but has been inactive the last few years. I was pretty dominant throughout, and was up a whole rook towards the end. But in time trouble I overlooked my weak back rank and was mated.
Round 2 I played my old foe from previous events, 11 year old Amy Milson. I luckily got a draw last time in Leicester. This time I played quite well and had a good attack going. She was able to defend against it initially and counterattack, but I'd damaged the defences a bit too much, with a nice Knight near her king. This led to mate.
Round 3 was against Barry Lings of Rolls Royce, who I lost to a couple of months ago in a league match. I won a pawn quite early on, can't remember much else from the game apart from that he forced a draw by repitition late on.
In round 4 I lost to Lloyd Clarke after I overlooked a bishop fork of queen and king.
Round 5 I finally beat Phil Smith after many times of trying, I was black for a change. It was close and could have gone either way but I managed to force my rooks through to his king.
The final game was against Neil Milson, Amy's father. This was an important game pyschologically for me, as I played him about 8 months ago in Rotherham and was absolutely decimated. This time I played infinitely better, and was proof to me that I'm progressing as a player. Sadly I could only get a draw, it was a rook and pawns ending with me having more pawns, but I just couldn't manage to promote a pawn or force him to swap rooks.
So final score of 3 out of 6: 2 wins, 2 draws and 2 losses. It was nice to finish mid-table rather than towards the bottom as I have done previously.
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4 comments:
Congratulations on the great results!
Well done, Dean. :)
You have most certainly improved! Congrats on your marked progress and keep up the good work.
That anonymous dude up there is me. I think you can change your settings so that we non-blogger users can post comments more easily as well.
Thanks happyhippo and samuraipawn. Over the weekend I've been asked to play for my county team this coming weekend. A great honour for me. I've currently got the comments set so that anyone can leave comments, but non blogger users have to enter that word verification stuff. I only do that to stop the auto spam bots.
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