Thai Open - 9th round
In the last round of the tournament I was playing White versus a 17-year old girl from India, Varshini V. She actually sported the second highest rating among all my opponents in this tournament (2159). By that time I was already expecting all Asian juniors to "punch above their weight" and Miss Varshini did not disappoint. However, there was no way of telling that half a year later she would become a Vice Champion in World Youth Championship, in U18 Girls category!
The game started quite badly for me. By 21st move all of my pieces were pushed to the last two ranks and it seemed that I was on the way to my first defeat. However, just then the tide finally started to turn and I got tantalizingly close to scoring my third victory...
And so the tournament ended for me with a 7th draw instead of the victory. In the final table I was on 39th place with 5.5 points out of 9. That was actually higher than my placement in the starting rakn, but still cost me 27 rating points.
One of my friends with whom I play on the same correspondence chess team dryly noted: "Classical result for correspondence chess player: +2 with no losses!" 
