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A satisfying win! I was quite happy with how I played the endgame especially. On the other hand, it took several blunders from my opponent before I got the win... the queenside weakness alone probably would not have been enough. I also felt a bit cheap basically skipping the middlegame and forcing all that simplification early on.
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So... a game against a 177 with the black pieces. I.e. against an expert player, >2000 FIDE equivalent, eligable for the ECF "County Master" title. I was probably doomed to lose, but really lost in a very sad way. I would prefer to have lost in a different way (even if it had been quicker!), if it had involved having some of my own play, and setting some more interesting challenges for my opponent. In this game I was too blinkered, and instantly dismissed some viable continuations based on generalisations.
After this game I became aware that I had been switched up a board, and Alan also wanted me to start playing as board 1 for the C team at the next game and probably going forward. He may yet live to regret that decision! I probably won't be getting many easy opponents now. Indeed this season has been quite a big step up in terms of average opponent rating. Last season the average rating of my opponent was 128, where as so far this season it has been 146. Find below my first board 1 game in Division 2... a pretty weird one at that!
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So there we go. I was lucky not to lose, but then stupid not to win! I could pretend that I saw the full tactial continuation when I played 18.Ne5 (I suppose it is fairly forcing after all), but I didn't at all, and was fortunate that the Qb5 resource was there, and that it worked. But without annotation you might almost believe that white knew what he was doing!
I think the main thing to learn from these recent games is that I need to rely less on blinkered generalisations, look at more candidate moves, and make myself calculate a bit more! To only let a calculated sequence refute a candidate move... especially when the alternatives (e.g. the passive position vs Mr 177, when I declined to play e6-e5) involve simply losing without any active play.
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