4NCL Online Congress Round 1

I've been keeping an eye out for some more regular rated games, the Yorkshire League is about to start again but that's only about a game a month and I'm going to miss a couple of them. There aren't really enough players in Settle to enter the weekly leagues, but then I spotted that 4NCL were running an on-line congress (for solo players) alongside their more prominent team stuff (4 Nations Chess League is the de facto British chess club competition, as far as I can tell, that runs independently of the national chess associations). The on-line congress runs fortnightly on Tuesdays for 7 rounds (!) with byes if required, on a reasonable evening-style 45 min +15 sec time control. So I signed up, not having much idea what to expect, and there are 20 of us in the Open section that look like a great set of opponents for me.

Pairings are released at 17:30 (you have until 17:00 to enter and/or ask for a bye) for a 19:30 start which gave me long enough to stalk my opponent, see he plays the Trompowski, and check a few simple lines as it's not something I've met OTB yet. Basic plan was to nab the bishop pair, equalise in the centre, maybe win the endgame though he wasn't a weak player...

So that went pretty well, I was a bit fixated on the bishops which maybe weren't really why I won, it was possibly more to do with the king position and central pawn mass that my opponent failed to challenge. For once I managed to avoid screwing up when running a bit short of time. Overall I managed my time quite respectably, though didn't make all the right choices even when I had a long think. No surprise there!

A few further thoughts about the mechanics of it: as it was a slow game, I had set up a real chessboard to play the moves on, though I abandoned that towards the end when my clock was down to 5 mins. Not sure if that was really a worthwhile idea or not. I can see the attraction of digital boards for this sort of game but the price is eyewatering. I also had move confirmation set on, which cost me a couple of mins when I failed to confirm once in a slightly stressful situation. I turned it off towards the end. I think I might use the same approach next time. Having a board to look at is more relaxing than a computer screen.