Nationals w00t!

After winning the intermediate interschools comp (the games were not as tough as expected so I won't be posting them) we entered a four-school playoff to select a NSW representative school in the national competition later this year.

The quality of play was very high, and the time controls were 1 hour per player per game with 10 second move increments. The entire affair went from about 10:30am to 6:30pm :O

We won our first two matches 4-0, and our last match 3.5-0.5 (a lot closer than it sounds), and I subbed off for the last round. I played on Board 3 in Round 1, and Board 4 in Round 2.

My first round game was quite tough. I entered the endgame early with a favourable position, but somehow ended up struggling for a draw. Luckily, my opponent blundered, and even I was able to win the resulting endgame.

I opened a little passively in the second round, but the game was basically decided after a piece blunder by my opponent.

So now our team will go to Canberra in December for the Nationals, so I'm going to start prepping :)