{"id":1082,"date":"2014-02-03T14:36:54","date_gmt":"2014-02-03T14:36:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/?p=1082"},"modified":"2016-01-18T13:32:34","modified_gmt":"2016-01-18T13:32:34","slug":"kidlington-chess-congress-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/?p=1082","title":{"rendered":"Kidlington Chess Congress 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m sure I could almost create a standard template for these posts now: it&#8217;s the sixth year I&#8217;ve played this tournament and here is a brief summary of what happened as I played again in the Under-180 section:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Round One: Got off to a poor start playing inaccurately in the opening as <strong>Black<\/strong>; I never recovered from that and, with a further missed tactic later on, this was always going to be <strong>Lost<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Round Two: For the third year running, playing Karl Biswas with <strong>White<\/strong>: got a good, solid position out of the opening and ground this one down to <strong>Win<\/strong> a slightly-better endgame.<\/li>\n<li>Round Three: Last game of the day saw me playing <strong>Black<\/strong> against a remarkably strong and mature 12-year-old boy. Although it nearly went pear-shaped in the opening, this one fizzled into a <strong>Draw<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Round Four: Just like the first round, I mucked this one up right at the start by messing up the opening: as <strong>White<\/strong> against a strong opponent, I really should have done better here. I recovered enough to make a (long) fight of it, but &#8211; apart from hoping for errors from my opponent &#8211; this was destined to be <strong>Lost<\/strong> too.<\/li>\n<li>Round Five: Playing <strong>Black<\/strong> against Darrell Watson, who I played four years ago in the lower section. For once I got a reasonable position from the opening and, in trying a little too hard to play for a win, my opponent gave me some excellent chances. As the time ran down, I made a serious blunder which should have cost me the game, but my opponent missed it and the game should have been drawn.  But my opponent returned the favour a few moves later, meaning I could finish with a <strong>Win<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div id=\"attachment_1085\" style=\"width: 390px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/carlsen1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1085\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/carlsen1.jpg\" alt=\"The new World Champion, Magnus Carlsen: not playing at Kidlington\" width=\"380\" height=\"285\" class=\"size-full\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1085\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The new World Champion, Magnus Carlsen: not playing at Kidlington<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Overall I&#8217;m a little disappointed with my results this year: that&#8217;s the first year I can really say that so I probably shouldn&#8217;t complain.<\/p>\n<p>The games were very long (all over three hours except the first, with the last one being nearly three-and-a-half) so it was very tiring.  Because of my performance and the length of the games, I spent a huge amount of <em>game time<\/em> feeling rather low about how I was doing.  Although I ended up on 50% overall, I only snatched that in the last minute of the final round.  Given that I scored higher last year against much stronger average opposition makes this year&#8217;s results look poor by comparison.<\/p>\n<p>Having said all that, it wasn&#8217;t a disastrous performance: two wins, one draw, two losses.  My grade for the tournament was only about 140 (last two years it has been 160+), but that&#8217;s not a disgrace.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m most disappointed about how I played in the openings, particularly.  If there&#8217;s a lesson to be learned from this event, it&#8217;s that I need to learn some lessons about openings!  Mistakes in the opening ultimately cost me both games I lost and perhaps prevented me from doing better in the drawn game. Learning to handle openings better will no doubt improve my play generally, although there&#8217;s a lot of time required to do this that I don&#8217;t really have.<\/p>\n<p>Beware future competitors of Kidlington 2015, I&#8217;ll be up for personal revenge!<\/p>\n<p>Full games with my commentary\/analysis <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/chess\/kid2014.html\" title=\"Kidlington 2014 games\">here<\/a> with full crosstabs and results for all sections available at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kidlingtonchess.org.uk\/\">Kidlington Congress website<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Final word of congratulations to local girl Zoe Varney who was joint winner of the lower Under-145 section with 5 out of 5.  Worrying thing is, she might be in my section next year&#8230; !<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m sure I could almost create a standard template for these posts now: it&#8217;s the sixth year I&#8217;ve played this tournament and here is a brief summary of what happened as I played again in the Under-180 section: Round One: Got off to a poor start playing inaccurately in the opening as Black; I never&#8230;&nbsp;(<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/?p=1082\">read more<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1082"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1227,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082\/revisions\/1227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}