4NCL Round 6

But what happened to Round 5, I hear you cry? Well, it didn't happen. At least, not for me. I sat down for my 5th round pairing in the 4NCL Congress....and my opponent didn't show up. No excuse, no apology, so I was not sorry to see him get thrown out of the competition. At least I hadn't driven an hour or two to face an empty chair in an OTB match. Then the following week I was due to sit out of the team event, and they responded with a comprehensive 4-0 thrashing of the league's bottom team.

So, straight on to Round 6. Following the unwanted default point, I was sitting in the top half of the congress table. I was drawn against someone I'd played previously, in fact he was my opponent in my first ever 4NCL game several seasons ago where I had narrowly prevailed in a close endgame. Colours reversed this time, I felt I had the better of the game for the most part (and the evaluation supports this) but lost in a time scramble.

I really have to try to avoid such situations, the 15s increment is ok for finishing off the simplest endgames and I've done that a few times in the past but it's not long enough in a complex middlegame situation, especially when contrasted to the 45 mins that I've luxuriated over for the first 25 moves. The abrupt change of pace has been difficult for me to navigate. This is far from the first time I've fallen apart in this way in time trouble. Other than that, the game was decent, I didn't play particularly well but it was a complicated middle game and I think my opponent did a rather better job than he had done in our previous encounter.

In the league, it was 3rd place against 4th, neither of us looked like challenging for the two promotion spots but the winner would have at least a theoretical possibility. On paper at least we were well matched, and it turned out that way with a 2-2 result. I had rather the better of my game, despite giving my opponent a few chances along the way I eventually won a piece on move 30 and mopped up quickly after that.