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Bradford Congress 2025

TournamentAnalysis
First competitive chess of the year

Bradford is City of Culture 2025 so it was only fitting that it should kick off the year with a new chess congress. It wasn't part of the official festivities (which actually start next weekend I believe) but we'll let that slide. This is a new 5 round weekend Swiss, 80+10 format allowing for 3 games on a tough Saturday and then 2 on Sunday with a prompt finish. This avoids the Friday evening travel/bye quandary though several players took the option of a bye on Saturday evening anyway.

It's mid-season really (season mostly considered to start in the autumn and run through to the next spring/summer) but after a Christmas break it feels like a bit of a fresh start. My last competitive game was early Dec, being the tail end of the 4NCL competitions.

Heading into this weekend congress I'd felt my mojo draining away. Perhaps partly due to a bad cold over the New Year period that left me more than usually tired. Or perhaps it was just a touch of burnout from a period of quite solid study up to Christmas. Anyway, whatever the cause, I hadn't followed my usual regime over the last couple of weeks and wasn't looking forward to the weekend as much as I had been when I entered a few weeks back! I was 4th ranked in the U1900 section so hoping to come out with some sort of plus score and ideally fighting for the prizes. I had also beaten the top seed in the the last round at Ilkley in the summer.

First round was against an upcoming 9 year old kid. Unlike some grumpy old men, I have absolutely no problem playing young opponents, sure they are often a bit under-rated but that's not their fault and they are invariably polite and well-behaved (some adults could learn a thing or two). I am trying to focus more on the quality of my play than rating points anyway. Here's the game, at least up to the point where I stopped recording (under 5 mins remaining):

https://lichess.org/study/81DRacww/04plvdUH#0

We played a nice KID/Benoni/4PA, the usual for me and I built up a strong advantage but failed to convert it effectively, finally coming out of the middle game complications with a piece for 4(!) pawns. We ended up with me having bishop and rook pawn vs his 5 pawns, 4 of them passed but all broken up. At the time I thought I had to be dead lost but the engine told me afterwards the last third of the game was a draw. Short on time, I made a horrible mistake right at the end. Unfortunately I don't have a record of all moves but this is how it ended tragically for me:

https://lichess.org/study/81DRacww/MNIz0dUK#0

Yes really. I just didn't have any mental capacity for thinking, I was playing very much on automatic pilot. Obviously a bit sad afterwards to realise not only had I missed very good chances to win (which I knew during the game) but that the endgame had actually been drawn all along and with a small amount of thought I'd have saved the game. Oh well on with the show.

Round 2 I was of course down towards the lower end of the competition, I was playing black and had the worse side of a Colle System. I rarely encounter this, London seems much more popular. I really didn't enjoy this game and actually spent a bit of the time pondering my life choices and wondering if I really didn't enjoy chess any more.

https://lichess.org/study/81DRacww/xqSw8xau#0

I never made any headway and my opponent wasn't hugely dynamic in his play either. I lost patience at one point and swapped off his annoying Ne5 which left me clearly worse for a while but then he let his advantage slip away and I happily accepted his draw offer as we started repeating moves. Looking at the analysis, we played quite accurately, but that was probably because the position was so quiet (for most of the game) that lots of moves were similarly good.

0.5 out of 2 was not the start I'd been looking for and I was still down on one of the bottom boards for Round 3. My next opponent played a couple of weak moves in the opening and I made short work of him:

https://lichess.org/study/81DRacww/uVp48AK7#0

I really enjoy these games where my opponent gives me a bit of a chance, and I take it neatly. A quick finish was also appreciated at the end of the long day, and I wasn't home too late. 1.5 out of 3 was a bit disappointing (against significantly lower rated opponents) but not a disaster and a nice recovery from the slow start.

Sunday morning I was feeling reasonably optimistic. I had black, my opponent over-reached with a couple of early moves and I played a very efficient smash and grab miniature, actually achieving mate in 16 moves.

https://lichess.org/study/81DRacww/YcrwaOdN#0

A very enjoyable workout which left me a decent length lunch break before the final round, which was up on board 3 with a change of decent final placing. I had white again, my opponent played a slightly inaccurate Nimzo and I had a great chance but a calculation fail caused me to miss the best approach. I still had a solid advantage but missed another decent chance and he started to exploit some weaknesses at which point I basically imploded.

https://lichess.org/study/81DRacww/Mboz0j4s#0

So I finished on 2.5 out of 5 with a performance rating around 1700, definitely not what I had hoped for but not a complete disaster. For context, the top seed scored only 0.5 out of 4 games played (plus a last round bye) for a performance rating in the 1300s. Also, the Open was won by an 1800 player I had beaten last summer, with none of the 5 players rated over 2100+ finishing in the top three including an FM who scored only 1 point in the three games he played. It's normal to have quite a large element of variation in the results. My two wins were very clean games and I had very good winning chances in both the two I lost. If I'd won my last game, 3.5 would have given me a share of 3rd place and I'd have been really pleased with that. It feels like I was only a move or two away from a good performance.