My hardest game

  This game was played in Paks, Hungary. After playing in the famous "First Saturday" tournement in Budapest I took a long bus ride down the Danube to compete in a smaller event with the chance for IM and GM norms. My opponnet in this game, a former 2600 player, was the highest rated Grandmaster in the event and having black I was of course a huge underdog. The game was played with the, new at the time, FIDE time control of 90 minutes for the game with a 30 second increment per move. I made the mistake of using up almost all of my time to play the fine move Ba8! although I now had a large advantage it proved too difficult to convert this into a win with the little time I had left. A further problem soon became apparent. When you are playing 'on the increment' you cannot go to the restroom! Your opponnet would move the instant you left the room and thirty seconds later you would lose the game. Grandmaster Nevidnichy tested my defense for quite a while after I let my advantage slip away, the game actually went on for quite a while after the game score ended - by that point neither one of us had time to spare. Finally though he was convinced that I was not going to wander into some checkmate trap and he offered the draw. I was interested to hear the GM comment to friends; "He just kept finding moves!" well, now we know how to survive against top players, just keep finding those good moves.