Rounds 8 and 9 of the Munster League took place on the 5th February and the B team had a tough assignment playing Ennis A home and away. We lost boths rounds heavily - 1.5-3.5 and 1-4.
I drew my first game with black. It was a Rubenstein French which ended up in a R+Kn vs R+Kn endgame which we drew by repetition. My opponent at one stage around move 21 had a potential sacrifice of his knight on f7. Even in the analysis afterwards we weren't too sure if it worked out. One interesting thing is that my opponent spent a lot of time trying to calculate this sacrifice. I had a similar experience in the last round of the Mulcahy where my opponent spent a lot of time trying to calculate a potential attack. My new strategy is to get into a position where there is a just plausible enough attack against me so my opponents burn lots of time on their clocks and I end up with a time advantage!
The second game was a complete disaster. I had sucessfully navigated my opponents attack and just needed a couple more accurate moves - h4 and knight somewhere - and we would havea level position. Instead I didn't realise my pawn was pinned and moved my knight to where it could be taken for nothing. What an absolute disaster. We have important games coming up against Limerick so I need to be a lot sharper for those.
→ posted on February 5, 2017chess