My first ever KNSB team match
On 13.02.2016 I played in my first ever KNSB (Koninglijke Nederlandse Schaakbond) team championships as a substitute for the second team which consisted of:
IM Mathew Tan 2441
CM Paul-Peter Theulings 2182
Florian Jacobs 2194
Lody Kuling 2241
Tobi Kooiman 2100
Dennis Brouwer 2153
Joel de Vries 2042
Ivan Pilcevic 2162
All of hoom are rated above 2000 but you may ask your selves; how come a 1233 rated player was invited to play as a sub for such a strong team. Well the answer; I have a tendency to beat many strong players and hold them to a draw and thus for my rating I am much better. Now let’s get back to the match. It just so happened that three of the players were unable to play on the day Lody Kuling was sick, Mathew Tan was supporting the first team (Zukertort Amstelveen A1) and Tobi Kooiman couldn’t play. Two very strong players replaced Tobi and Mathew; Michiel Harmsen, and Bram Ter Scheggen both rated above 1900 but on the last moment the substitute for Lody backed out. Two hours before the match was scheduled to begin, I got a call from Florian Jacobs asking if I could play as a substitute, my answer was naturally Yes.
2 hours later I was at the board, me a 1233 rated player playing on board 7 of 8 against a 1998 rated player (I have never played a player higher rated than this) so naturally I was nervous, it also didn’t help that I was playing with black. I did not want to lose the match and cause the team to lose. But with my reputation at the club, it was very probable that I would be the first to finish and at this level lose. Don’t get me wrong, I was the first to finish but still the game lasted for 4 hours, longer than any of my previous games.
The game started with 1. d4 an opening that I am very familiar with, so I guess one could say that I got off lucky considering that I had had no time to prepare for the game. Going into the game my hopes were to hold a draw and keep things as simple as I could. But that did not happen why? Here is the game.
