4NCL Spring 2024

No sooner has one game gone than another one arrived. Actually I've been playing most Tuesdays this year, in the 4NCL On-line Congress and the 4NCL League, the former being solo and the latter in a team with my club. Last night was the last round of the Congress, a 7 round open Swiss that I'd done quite poorly in the previous edition of at the end of last year. This one went a lot better, maybe partly due to the chessnut electronic board, mostly I think due to familiarity with the format and time control. I still lost a couple of games, one badly out of the opening and one after a small oversight during a long struggle, but I won 4, including one where I came back from a poor opening with a very strong attack, and another 3 where I took my opponent apart quite effectively.

Last night's was a particularly pleasing example. My opponent played the Pterodactyl/Beefeater variation (names seem to vary a bit) in the Modern, which I had lost against last summer in Ilkley, so I'd taken the trouble to learn a good counter-plan. He was quickly in difficulty and I rounded it off with a nice queen sac mate. 

Lichess says my average centipawn loss was 18 which is pretty good for a game with lots of tactical nuances and multiple winning choices every step of the way, though I don't really believe the precision of the evaluation on a move-by-move basis anyway as it jumps wildly depending how long I run the engine. Going from something like +5.9 to +5.5 isn't really an error, especially if the route to a win becomes simpler.

So a finishing score of 4.5/7, a share of 3rd place (4th on tie-break) and a bit of a recovery of rating points after the terrible performance last time. Can't wait for the next one!