2011-01-20 Nowell-Vannini 0-1

Another Thursday, another loss. Vannini is nothing like as strong as Patelli, but still much better than me.

I was quite pleased with this game. It seemed to me that black started with a policy of "wait and see", and I was pleased with the way built my position - castling queenside, taking back on e3 with my pawn to open the f-file. I kept a look out for counterattacks, and I think I got quite close to making my f-file attack work.

I did put this one on Fritz, and it confirms that there are no blunders up until my 19. d5. I should really have calculated that this wasn't going to work, but the fact is that I don't calculate well. What I should have given more weight to was the fact that when he doesn't continue the exchanges on d5, my bishop is going to be taken out of the action on f7 because of my pawn on d5, at least for one move.