On Ilkley Moor again (part 1)

I've decided to take occasional trips to the chess Mecca that is Ilkley, home of the eponymous Chess Centre. Not that there's anything wrong with Settle Chess Club, it's great, and just 5 mins walk down the road, but there's a bigger range of players at Ilkley and it's not a huge drive.

Yesterday they had a little rapid tournament, 25 min (each) per game and 5 rounds in all. The clubhouse can handle 18 players (9 boards) and rather than a Swiss arrangement, it was 3 divisions of 6 in an all play all basis. I was put in the top division on the basis of my standard rating, but have never played competitive rapid though at Settle we do play a lot of similar style socially on the club nights. However we usually play 15/10, ie 15 mins and a 10s increment per move, which doesn't guarantee a fixed time per game but does mean you never have a mad clock scramble at the end. 15/10 means 60 moves can take 25 mins per player = 50 total, but a 120 move game (as if!) could go to 35 mins etc which would interfere with a tight schedule.

Anyway, on with the games. I was drawn black against the top-rated player in R1, so was expecting to get well thrashed, especially when he started with my pet hate of 1 c4. However my secret weapon worked rather well and according to Stockfish I'd basically equalised inside the first 10 moves. Then he trapped his queen with the help of a poison pawn (disclaimer - I hadn't even seen the tactic that won the pawn for him).

But I didn't spot the trap, and it went downhill from there.

Oh well, I really wasn't expecting to beat him, I've never even played someone with such a high rating (except when I was a schoolboy, when I had the honour of being the last survivor in a 40 board simul against Gennadi Sosonko).

Round 2 has to be better, right?

Well, I had white, but didn't do such a great job of the opening. Rather than settle for equality, I decided to have a bit of fun with a king-side attack, but didn't really have much basis for it and it ended quickly and messily. 2 down.