4NCL Round 2

Games coming thick and fast now. Well not really, but the 4NCL congress is fortnightly and we also had a Yorkshire League match at the weekend. So it feels busy enough.

Going in to Round 2 I was one of the 5 tournament leaders on 1 point, so came up against one of the top players - a genuine OTB 1920. Probably a mistake on my part to think about the rating too deeply, I sat down at the board expecting I'd probably lose and this attitude may have held me back from playing the position to my best ability. Anyway, the game developed quite interestingly (for a Slav) and not necessarily to my disadvantage, until I was playing on the increment late in the game and the last move is a bit tragic.

The chess.com analysis says we played at about 75% accuracy which is completely rubbish compared to my usual numbers (and, I'm sure, my opponent). I don't think either of us really understood the position very well, or perhaps it was just extremely complicated. There were a lot of tactical details that I didn't get at all, not sure I do still, and the "best line" at the point I blundered was a ridiculous temporary rook sac that neither of us would have had a hope of spotting OTB.

For comparison, the previous round of the 4NCL I was 93% and my somewhat passive opponent 87%. And at the weekend in the Yorkshire League both me and my 1600 opponent were at a ridiculously high accuracy of over 97%. I conclude that these numbers aren't very useful or informative.

So the final result was a pity but that's the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. 45+15 is a sort of intermediate time control, not really classical duration (especially compared to Saturday's 110+10 snoozefest) and I was always down on the clock. I must try to be a bit more attentive to this next time. I know I'm not great at blitz so can't afford to get much lower on time than my opponent.

Still uncertain about using a proper board vs just playing on the screen. The board was (deliberately) some way offset from the clock which didn't help with time control, and switching from using the former to only the latter as my time ran low was a bit of a panicked distraction. Next time will be screen only as I'm travelling so we'll see how that goes.