27 May '19 15:33>
Greetings players and fellow patzers 🙂
Well I've stepped up and finally played my first real 'Major' tier section, held in Huddersfield this past weekend.
The rating cap was ECF Under 166, much higher than the 115, 135 and 145 caps I've played up until now.
The time controls were all moves in 90 mins + 10 secs gained per move.
The event had 6 rounds, but I took a half-point bye in round 1 so played just 5 games.
Would I continue my run of successes, or would the step-up prove too tough to overcome?
---------------------------
Game 1 - Steve Westmoreland (149) vs Zak Tomlinson (130)
Prep is important... the tougher your opponent, the more opening prep helps keep you safe from embarassment.
Heading into this game, I knew my opponent plays the English (I checked online).
So I looked at lines for Black and settled on the Four Knights system, which looks like this:
This decision was largely influenced by the following article, which is based on study by GM Boris Avrukh:
https://www.modern-chess.com/en/chess-databases/database=27
In this game, Steve played 4.e3, which the article states 4...Bb4 is "of course" the best response for Black.
So "of course" I completely muddled two different lines up in my head and played something else.
The result was not nice...
For a bit of fun, I'm also going to share computer 'accuracy' scores which I get from another site.
Steve Westmoreland
Inaccuracies: 0
Mistakes: 1
Blunders: 0
Average centipawn loss: 21
Zak Tomlinson
Inaccuracies: 3
Mistakes: 2
Blunders: 1
Average centipawn loss: 77
Well I've stepped up and finally played my first real 'Major' tier section, held in Huddersfield this past weekend.
The rating cap was ECF Under 166, much higher than the 115, 135 and 145 caps I've played up until now.
The time controls were all moves in 90 mins + 10 secs gained per move.
The event had 6 rounds, but I took a half-point bye in round 1 so played just 5 games.
Would I continue my run of successes, or would the step-up prove too tough to overcome?
---------------------------
Game 1 - Steve Westmoreland (149) vs Zak Tomlinson (130)
Prep is important... the tougher your opponent, the more opening prep helps keep you safe from embarassment.
Heading into this game, I knew my opponent plays the English (I checked online).
So I looked at lines for Black and settled on the Four Knights system, which looks like this:
This decision was largely influenced by the following article, which is based on study by GM Boris Avrukh:
https://www.modern-chess.com/en/chess-databases/database=27
In this game, Steve played 4.e3, which the article states 4...Bb4 is "of course" the best response for Black.
So "of course" I completely muddled two different lines up in my head and played something else.
The result was not nice...
For a bit of fun, I'm also going to share computer 'accuracy' scores which I get from another site.
Steve Westmoreland
Inaccuracies: 0
Mistakes: 1
Blunders: 0
Average centipawn loss: 21
Zak Tomlinson
Inaccuracies: 3
Mistakes: 2
Blunders: 1
Average centipawn loss: 77