Unfortunately I officially became part of the club tonight, when I lost my postponed round 1 game from the Bob Brooking Round Robin to Richard Voon. Once again I had a promising position, or at least I thought I did (the computer thinks it was marginally better at best), until I decided to try to complicate things & play for a win, so I sacrificed my knight for 3 pawns & a scary looking attack. Perhaps some signs from earlier in the game should have told me otherwise (I didn't see Richard's 14.Nd4, which was awkward to deal with, nor did I notice that 14...Qd7 actually lost an exchange) & I should have gone for the safe option of 32...Nc7 (which Fritz sees as 0.00) rather than the speculative 32...Nxf4 that I decided to play. Of course I also missed a number of defensive moves that Richard played, in particular 40.Kh1. I was of course hoping for the spectacular 40.Qxd8? when after 40...h3 41.Qxc7+ Kh6 there are no more useful checks & I have a forced checkmate, in spite of being 2 rooks & a bishop down! Alas, this loss leaves me with just 1/3 so far, with the top 2 seeds (David Beaumont & Sylvester Urban) to play in the coming weeks. Let's hope something improves for those games!
No comments:
Post a Comment