Thai Open - 6th round

In the 6th round I was paired with a 21-year player from Poland. Somehow I was more optimistic about my chances in this game than in the previous rounds, even though I was playing Black and my opponent had a higher rating than most of my previous ones. However, I thought that by the age of 21 my opponent's rating should better reflect his real playing power than it was the case for the teenagers that I played in the previous rounds. By the way, I was wrong on that, as in the next few months my opponent's rating jumped up by almost 100 points

In any case, I did have good chances of winning this game, but not before I misplayed the transition out of the opening and was almost losing by move 16. I also burnt most of my time at that stage. However, then the tide has turned and I got a winning position just a few moves later. However, I could not get it done due to the same issues that hounded me the whole tournament - poor time management multiplied by bad calculation. Later on I got another chance of winning the game, but again failed to close it.

In retrospect, it is interesting to think why I got so upset about not winning this game. After all, I was almost losing out of the opening! However, the only thing that I remembered from the game was that I could win it twice and in the end still did not manage to close it. I am sure that if I was on the other side of the same draw I would actually come away inspired. It's really amazing how important is the final sequence to a player's memory of the game!