Bristol Congress - Friday
For me, a win in the Friday evening match is one of the most important for three reasons:
1) It sets me up in a good mood for the rest of the weekend's games.
2) It's a good chance to get a 0.5pt headstart on the "proper grown ups" who can't make it that night and are obliged to take a half point bye.
3) Any other result and I'd have been no worse off staying in and watching QI.
Oh, a little background. I knew my opponent from a game before we had played in the league. We agreed a draw but subsequent analysis showed he had a slight edge. He played 1. Nf3 and adopted a King's Indian style set-up and I suspected he would again. In fact, after this game he joined chess.com (with the handle Totalcrap, it's not me slagging him off in the PGN!) and we played a 3rd game:
http://www.chess.com/echess/game.html?id=17786192 - another draw; I was testing a more aggressive approach. It's a work in progress, I'm yet to crack it.
With those thoughts in mind, allow me to show you my first congress match... I didn't win.