Back in Action at the Munster League

The Munster League started back up again in Charleville last weekend. The B team were in action and in the first game lost 4 1/2 to 1/2 against the Cork A team. In the second game we shared the spoils with Charleville.

For the first game we were treated to the luxurious conditions that the A team expects - leather seats, wooden boards and pieces. No expense spared! I had a mixed game in a Rubinstein French. I was well prepared and only used the increment for the first 20 or so moves and built up a huge time advantage against my much higher rated opponent. This was especially useful later once I started to make my customary blunders as my opponent didn't have a great deal of time to find the best moves! I got a comfortable, equal endgame position and then hallucinated that my opponent was winning a piece. I made some terrible moves and ended up losing most of my pawns giving my opponent had an massively winning position.

Luckily for me he failed to find the win and I managed to trade into a Rook & split a and c pawns against a Rook endgame. I had done a great deal of work on my endgames recently with Jesus DeLaVilla's 100 endgames course on Chessable so I was fairly confident here. I held out for 50 moves and only gave one winning chance around move 85. Again my opponent failed to find this and I escaped with a draw.

For the second game we were back slumming it with the typical B team standard. No more leather chairs, plastic sets! I got a bit confused out of the opening against my opponent and ended up in a blocked position. I decided to swap my bishop for his knight as I felt that an extra knight would be better suited to the position. I ended up getting a really strong position - probably winning as I was up a piece. However then it all fell apart for me. My opponent got a really strong attack with his queen and my pieces were forced into awkward positions. I missed the fact that I could get my queen to e7 via a check on c7. If I had found that I think I would have converted the game. My opponent offered a draw but I felt that as the match result was hanging on this I should try to play on. Naturally I blundered into to a losing position but fortunately got back to draw in the end.

→ posted on October 15, 2017chess