I'm hoping no-one has been waiting for me to update them on the final two days of the British Championships - there are much quicker ways to get the news than this website!
Anyway, in my last round game in the Over-50s tournament I managed to chalk up another win to finish on 4.5/7 for a share of 5th place with IM (and former British Champion) Paul Littlewood. Not such a good achievement as it may sound, as I didn't play a single higher graded player all week, and my performance was almost exactly in line with both my ECF and FIDE grades. Meanwhile, in what was his penultimate round, Paul went down rather badly with Black to an unknown Frenchman, who presumably qualified by residence. On the same day, Ben put in a hard shift in the Rapidplay event to score 4.5/9, matching his 50% score in the long play tournaments.
Only Paul was in action on the Sunday, bringing his British Championship campaign to an end with a very memorable game - and a finish that deserves pride of place in these Reports. Let Paul set the scene:-
"I played 1.Nc3 with the intention of move-ordering my opponent into a line with which he was unfamiliar. Because I’m so smart, I managed to move-order myself into the White side of an Open Sicilian…something which I have not seen over the board for years! I was left to navigate my way through the thickets which, surprisingly, I was able to do to the extent that I found myself with a clear advantage after 19 moves. Unfortunately, by that stage I had run myself down to just 13 minutes to my opponent's 57 minutes, with 21 moves to go to the time control. Two appalling moves in succession followed from me and I found myself staring defeat in the face. With just several minutes left, Tactical resourcefulness came to the fore and I spotted a filthy swindle. Whether or not my opponent would fall for it was another matter....." Find out if there's a happy ending by playing through the game now!
Its often better to be a lucky player than a good one!
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