The final round of the Doeberl Cup saw me paired as black against Andrey Bliznyuk. I was expecting an English or something similar, but found myself in a Two Knights Defence. Andrey chose the passive but solid 4. d3 & this allowed me to get a promising position from the opening. After exchanging queens, we reached a position where we had two rooks, a knight & opposite coloured bishops. My centre appeared strong, but was vulnerable. In trying to hold the position, I went astray with 26... Ne7, which gave Andrey an initiative that he did not let go of until I finally resigned. The issue I had in the position was what to do with the knight - although I found a good square for it on g6 to help hold my weak e5 pawn, my pieces were tied down to its defence, which allowed Andrey to create a passed pawn on the queenside, which proved too difficult to stop (helped by my inaccurate play).
Overall a result of 3.5/9 was a little disappointing, particularly when you consider that it was in fact 2.5/8 from games I played. Apart from the first round, all my opponents were what I would consider beatable if I played well, however unfortunately I played fairly poorly for the vast majority of the tournament, or at least in parts of most of my games. I had chances in quite a few games, but could not capitalise on these, which was the disappointing part of the tournament.
I suppose the good to come out of the tournament was that it has got me thinking about the blog again, so hopefully I will continue to keep it updated in coming months. I still have the photos from the Museum to upload & update the Day 3 blog. I'll also post something about the Master Classes by GMs Ganguly & Van Wely that I attended before the tournament, as well as various chess-related events I have been involved in recently.
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