Australian Reserves Day 11

Finally an almost reasonable game, although my opponent was definitely playing worse than he ordinarily would, as he lacked motivation after losing his round 10 game from a winning position. Tony played 1...e6, so that kind of took away the posibility of playing the Semi-Slav that I had mentioned in my previous blog post, however I had decided I was going to go head-long into the BDG (or more likely Alapin French, as Tony often plays 1...e6 against 1.e4). Rather surprisingly, Tony played a fairly passive setup, with pawns on e6 & c6, with Nd7 & Be7, which seemed somewhat at odds with his usual tactical style & allowed me to basically put my pieces exactly where I wanted them. With some pressure mounting (though hardly a forced win at this stage)< tony played the awful 13...f6, which pretty much loses on the spot after 14.Nxc6. I managed to play some second-rate moves & didn't finish off the position as quickly as I should have (Fritz likes the idea of playing 17.Be2, followed by 18.Qa3+ & 19.Nxb6, which wins fairly convincingly), although the ending was much better for me in any case. Tony helped the cause by also playing some ordinary moves & I managed to finish the tournament off with a win in under 30 moves.


My final results for the tournament are hardly inspiring, particularly when you consider the number of games where I managed to score at least half a point more than I deserved:
1 Setiabudi Megan 1552 AUS b ½
2 Langer John 1281 AUS w 1
3 Chew Lee Max 1703 AUS b ½
4 Bishop Joshua 1758 AUS w 1
5 Anderson Alistair 1840 AUS b ½
6 Spuler David 1936 AUS w 0
7 WCM Wijesuriya G V 1716 AUS b 0
8 Vuglar Shanon 1537 AUS w 1
9 McKenzie Colin 1674 AUS b 1
10 Bennett Matthew 1746 AUS w ½
11 Davis Tony J 1807 AUS w 1

Overall the tournament was won by Justin Penrose, who scored 9/11, ahead of Ari Dale on 8.5. Both started slowly & only found their way to the top boards late in the event, with the early leaders faltering towards the end of the tournament. Both Justin & Ari are regulars at Melbourne Chess Club (where I also play & run events), so it was good to see some people I know do well in the event, even if my own performance was less than inspiring.