Comstock
From the highest highs....
The highlight of the tournament
Waiting for Rd3 to finish from the comfort of my living room I kept scanning to see when the next draw would be announced. After what seemed ages, there it was, Board 3, Black versus Stephen Mannion! My first competitive OTB game versus a titled player. After the initial shock I realised this was why I was in this tournament in the first place, to come up against player of this calibre. I may not ever be at this level again, though I would like to think there's a good outside chance, but it was one of the aims I had in the tournament to at least get a game with one of them and see what I could do.
And so, to work. I must admit I had some inkling as to what Stephen would play against the French as I'd seen him playing on a live stream against one of the Botez sisters from a tournament in Iceland. It was a close run thing, the match eventually drawn after Stephen was in trouble early on. What really wound me up was the commentary from GM Hammer, who I think trains one of them (happy to be corrected if I am wrong on this), crowing about how Stephen was going to lose in under 20 moves and how the Botez sister (I can't remember which one) was going to destroy this IM with ease. So I spend the next hour, with the sound off, checking that Stephen survives and has a playable position, which fortunately he did. Short story long, I saw that he played the Tarrasch variation of the French, which I then started preparing for, results below:
Of course it was highly likely that I would lose, and that is not what bothered me so much. It was the manner in which I handed the the advantage to Stephen which grated and it took the edge off what should have been one of my best days there. However there were a couple of other points which helped to significantly mitigate this feeling of disappointment. First the chat with Stephen after the game was excellent, he is an absolute gentleman and extremely courteous. We spent a good 10-15mins discussing the game and I was able to share my Botez story also. Secondly the my subsequent after match analysis revealed an interesting possibility for me on move 31 which hadn't been discussed and reinforced my continuing love for this game. To paraphrase GM Svidler, the fact it existed and I was able to help make it happen I find incredible. I now just have to transfer this into a game from the after match analysis!
As a bonus for you all who have made it this far and put up with my whinging I offer another game from this round I found excellent. Henrik played some very interesting games throughout the tournament, though it led to a couple of sharp reversals against IM's Greet and McKay. This game I found really interesting, I hope you do too. See you shortly for Rd5 (don't call me Shortly...)
