Spondon club championship v Bert Loomes

Last night I had a long 71 move match against Bert Loomes (117 ECF) in the Spondon club championship. I got into very bad time trouble towards the end, throwing away what looked like a winning position and losing. I haven't had time trouble this bad for a while, so not sure if it was me playing too slowly, or if it was just that this match was a lot longer than my average matches. Anyway, there's a lot I can learn from this match and I hope it helps me to improve.

He played the french defence, with a fianchetto on the queenside. It looks like once he castled queenside, I should have started pushing my queenside pawns forward a lot quicker, and been a lot more aggressive. Instead I concentrated on trying to defend his kingside attack, when counter-attack would have been better.


I miscalculated 36.Ne3 above, for some reason I didn't even notice it was being attacked by a pawn until I put the piece down. But luckily for me it was actually the best move, as the pawn was also defending his rook. He missed the knight fork on the next move leaving me up the exchange.

Around this time I started running out of time. Giving up my knight was a mistake. His h-pawn was an annoyance I couldn't figure out how to stop. Maybe I should have offered a draw around this time, but I guess it's better to play it out and learn from it.

The game was still winnable towards the end, but I missed most of the best moves, don't know if I would have played better with more time. With perhaps a few more minutes I might have realised I should have pushed my a-pawn to promotion.