Quad #54: Game 3 (Round 5)

Hi all!

So, I haven't had too much time for chess recently; first there were exams, then there was the post-exam party/gigging/relaxing in the sun period, and after finishing off at uni for the year I went straight into my summer job, and have been concentrating on that for the past month! But now, I've decided I have time to spend some time on chess again. Specifically, slow chess! (Because as much as I love 1 minute, solely playing that has resulted in my thought process for longer games turning into absolute gash). Also, bullet chess gives me a short term fix; but slower chess is so much more satisfying to play. The full 3 course meal, as opposed to a quick snack.

So, next weekend I will be playing in the Micro-Swiss #10, organised by the folks over at the Dan Heisman Learning Centre (A fantastic job of organising different slow chess events is done by the organisers over there). Before I get to those, however, I realised that I never got round to blogging the last two games I played in the Quad #54 from back in May (Not the only thing I forgot; I was playing a computer-aided correspondence game a few months ago with a mate; he recently remembered about it and asked me whose move it was. Turned out it had been mine since the 27th April ) So I'll be getting those out this week, circumstances permitting, and then can move on fresh.

So, Quad #54! It's the Modern-Benoni themed quad, an opening that I didn't think I knew anything about beforehand. Actually though, having now played 4 games in the opening ... it's safe to say that I'm certain I know nothing whatsoever about the opening. Well, the games were fun!

This game, I had White against dacster13, and managed a draw. My play skirted on the edge of respectability throughout, I missed tactics, maneouvres, all sorts of ideas ... and managed somehow to force a draw right at the end. Here's the game, with improvements for both sides discussed.

A very fun game to play. On balance, I guess a draw was fair enough - I missed far too many elementary tactics to deserve a win, and Black let me get a winning position in the middlegame and then blew the endgame - he didn't deserve it either! (Although well played to my opponent - he played a lot of good ideas)

Round 6 will be following soon (next few days), so stay tuned, and thanks for reading!