Notts Congress Rd4&5

Sunday was a bad day for me after a good first day. I threw away round 4 with a mistake on move 8, miscalculating the resulting position from some trades. I missed a chance to get back into it by not playing Rxd4 below.


PeterMellorvDeanMadden.pgn

Round 5 was the most frustrating game for me. I was ahead but threw it away by not visualising properly.

I was happy that I spotted 11.Ncxe5 below (11...Bxc5 12. Nxe5 Qxe5 13. Bc3 skewers the Queen to the rook). Fritz says 11. Ba5 is even better.

In the position below I played 33 Nxg6. For some reason I thought him taking with the Queen would leave his Rook undefended. Obviously didn't think it through.

Shortly afterwards he put me out of my misery.

DeanMaddenvRonaldWatson.pgn

Notts Congress Rd3

Round 3 of the Nottingham congress I played Sean McDonald. He played the Pirc defense and I tried to play a symmetrical Kings Indian Attack against it. His big mistake was missing the Knight fork on move 33. I got into deep time trouble in this game, and stopped taking score with a few minutes left, it ended up with King and Rook versus King when he resigned with me having a minute or two left. Move 54 was the one that sealed it for me.

DeanMaddenvSeanMcDonald.pgn