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Bristol Congress - Friday

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Meadows
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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.

 
So there it was.  I was on 0.5 and I didn't have any new Stephen Fry facts.  Rubbish!  Stay tuned for Saturday's appraisal, I promise it's a good one.  I played the top two in the Intermediate!