![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/carlsen-caruana.jpg\")
<\/a>Fabiano Caruana and Magnus Carlsen. Not playing at Kidlington this year, strangely.<\/p><\/div>\n
- \n
- Round One: I started off with Black<\/strong> against a higher-rated opponent. He played slightly inaccurately in the opening and I spotted an opportunity to equalise: I think the game was always destined to be a Draw<\/strong> after that, neither of us willing to take any risks in the first round. Also a short game at “only” 2.5 hours!<\/li>\n
- Round Two: Paired with a very highly-rated player, previously extremely highly-rated, playing White<\/strong>. The game was progressing well, he had a slight edge, then I managed to equalise. Then he found a good attacking resource to sacrifice knight & bishop for rook & two pawns. This was well-judged on his part because my minor pieces were too loose to consolidate. Well played, so ultimate I Lost<\/strong> this one.<\/li>\n
- Round Three: Playing Black<\/strong> against my first female opponent I’ve ever faced at Kidlington. She played the opening somewhat timidly which allowed me to take an early initiative but I couldn’t quite find the right path to finish. I took a lot of time setting traps but she correctly avoided them all. I started losing the thread as I
\nran low on time and it looked like fizzling out into a draw (or worse if I was unlucky), but I set one final trick. Fortunately for me, this one worked and I was very pleased to Win<\/strong> this one before heading home for a well-earned sleep!<\/li>\n- Round Four: Day Two started with a game with White<\/strong> against a similar-rated opponent. I didn’t play the opening correctly and got a very passive position where I just couldn’t find moves to play which didn’t make my position worse! I ultimately found a way to create a bit of play, but my opponent’s counter-attack was very well played. Shame to have Lost<\/strong> this one.<\/li>\n
- Round Five: Another game with Black<\/strong> against a similarly-rated opponent. He played an opening I was unfamiliar with and I spent most of the game feeling under extreme pressure. He played a sacrificial attack and I was sure I was on the point of losing. I was grasping at ‘only moves’ to escape, so he kept sacrificing more material. In the end it was too much and I finished the tournament (again) with a Win<\/strong> which is great, psychologically-speaking.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Curiously all my points in this tournament came with Black: I scored 0 out of 2 with White, but 2.5 out of 3 with Black. So overall 50% which is my usual target: tournament grade is 160 which is pretty good (above my listed 149 at present).<\/p>\n
My own game annotations are now available<\/a>. Also the results crosstables<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kidlington Chess Congress 2019: last year I had a lot of very long games, which I found rather tiring but enjoyable. Still, I wasn’t going to complain this year if some of the games were a little shorter. Round One: I started off with Black against a higher-rated opponent. He played slightly inaccurately in the… (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-1318","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\/1318","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=1318"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1329,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318\/revisions\/1329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sungate.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
- Round Two: Paired with a very highly-rated player, previously extremely highly-rated, playing White<\/strong>. The game was progressing well, he had a slight edge, then I managed to equalise. Then he found a good attacking resource to sacrifice knight & bishop for rook & two pawns. This was well-judged on his part because my minor pieces were too loose to consolidate. Well played, so ultimate I Lost<\/strong> this one.<\/li>\n