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2011 SC/NC Border Battle

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soundso
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I enjoyed last year's SC/NC Border Battle so much that I was happy to participate again this year. I again played in the Class D match, my rating having taken a beating in the past year. These are all G/90 games.

The neat thing about this match is that you only play two opponents, and you know who they are in advance. This let us do a little research. One of the opponents was the same as last year, so I had those games to look over. And we were able to find a couple other games from the other opponent. Not exactly a vast history to work with, but interesting to study.

The Class D NC players were two amiable guys from the Henderson/Vance Chess Club. My teammate was from the Columbia Chess Club.

Game 1 opened into a line I'm comfortable with. My pieces got sort of cramped and then my opponent blundered into a big skewer. I didn't notice this immediately, but he did, as I could tell from his quiet grumblings. I found it soon enough. He had a sizable time advantage and my queen's mobility was limited, so we fought it out to the end.

I had white in game 2. My opponent surprised me by pushing pawns early, but I was able to win the exchange and proceed from there, albeit with little time again.
On Sunday I had a rematch with the fellow I played last year, in which I only had scored 1/2 out of 2. I think I tried too hard to make up for it, and didn't play the endgame well.
Now my career against this player was 0.5 of 3. I was due for a win and got lucky along the way. Turns out to be the first rated miniature I was on the winning side of.
It was great to have a short game on the winning side. I'm very happy with my 3 out of 4 result, but overall South Carolina took a beating from our northern neighbors. Better luck next year! Thanks to all the NC and SC chess association folks who put it together.