Another day, another shocking position ... but somehow I managed to find a way out & scramble a win against Colin McKenzie. I grabbed a pawn in the opening & everything was fine for me (although a little scary) until I played 13...Qa4 (rather than the safer 13...Qc5), when the red light on Fritz came on & my opponent was nice enough to wait a number of moves before playing the crushing Qb2 idea, exploiting the lack of dark-squared bishop on the long diagonal. Colin even helped me by not taking the exchange when I offered it as a way to try to get out of my defensive worries & then played a few inaccurate moves when short of time to allow me to get back into the game & eventually swap off pieces into a winning ending.
I'm back to playing the ACT juniors tomorrow, this time against Matthew Bennett. Hopefully I can repeat the result against him from last year's Ryde-Eastwood Open (albeit that I am white this time, rather than black as I was in that game) & salvage some sort of dignity from this tournament.
At the pointy end of the tournament, Doug Hamilton leads by half a point after beating David Spuler, while MCC regulars Frank Lekkas & Justin Penrose are also in the pack half a point behind Hamilton. The last few rounds are going to be interesting at that end of the tournament!
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