After 4 draws and 1 loss, I knew it was only a matter of time before I scored a full point in one of my games. Last Tuesday was the night, but it could so easily have been another big fat zero for me.

Playing as white, by move 2 I was out of my opening book facing the Dutch Defence which I’d never played against (if any Bristol league players are reading this, I’ve now done some preparation against 1. d4 f5 so don’t expect to catch me out if I meet you over the board!).

I probably had the slight initiative going into the middlegame, but I allowed my opponent to get some sustained pressure on the kingside. I defended well for several moves and conceding nothing. Black then tried to force his way through when there was no way forward, but I played a bad move that would have lost the exchange (and probably the game) – however, neither of us saw this and he blundered back leaving me a healthy pawn up and with an untouchable knight on the 6th rank! It was my turn to put the pressure on and after a blunder on move 33 he never recovered.

It was also my first win against an opponent rated over 100 ECF, so another milestone can be ticked off. I played solidly pretty much the whole way through only to have a good go at throwing it away on move 27.

Yes, it’s opening day of Advent, and only 24 days left till Christmas so perhaps we should dedicate a particular opening to the month of December, one which offers the opponent many gifts obviously. How about the gift of a horse? 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Nxe5 [C44] ?

Seriously though, December gets a bit busy for me (still have the Christmas shopping to do of course!) so it will be all I can do to keep up with the chess study and I’ll probably not be posting much until the new year.

In the meantime, see how much you know about the true Christmas by taking this Christmas Quiz and as always feel free to leave your comments!

Have a good Christmas and New Year!