First win of the season!
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.


Sunday, January 11th 2009 at 12:15 am
Nice blog. I would like to know what chess game viewer you are using. It looks very clean.
Sunday, January 11th 2009 at 9:39 am
I’m using Palview combined with Palmate. Not at all user friendly, but gives the best results out of the one’s I’ve tried.
Sunday, January 11th 2009 at 1:34 pm
Thanks, Dave. I’ll check out Palview. Congratulations on a nice win!
Saturday, March 7th 2009 at 3:13 pm
Good win, Dave! Well done. Looking forward to your next presentation
Tuesday, September 15th 2009 at 5:52 pm
The dutch opening is really hard to play. Well done !