The 2018 / 2019 ICU season kicked off at the City of Dublin weekender held in September. This season was one I approached with as much intent to perform well, as I had done in a while. This is because I will be taking a step back from playing relatively seriously, at the end of the season, for about a year to focus on the last year of my PhD.
Despite my showing at the Irish Championship Supporting events in August not being as convincing as I had hoped after a few good performances earlier in the year, I was at least happy with the fact that I had consolidated the 180 point rating jump I achieved at the Ennis Open in May.
I was seeded in the top 10 of the draw in my section. The first round I was playing back against a solid player. After a fairly even middle game phase, I managed to capitalise on my opponent’s misstep to go into the end game with a winning position.
and the stage was set……for a trademark pawn ending screw up from me. This has been happening a lot recently.
In my defence, I had studied up on pawn ending theory that I was continually getting wrong, and I had a couple of minutes plus increments on the clock, but this was pretty much inexcusable.
In this position, it was my move, and instead of c5, I played Bxc3 leading the game to a dead draw.
Bxc3, Bxc3 Kxc3, Ke3 Kb3, Kxe4 Kxa3, f4
and hold on to your hats people because here comes the height of lunacy. Instead of calculating properly and making c4, Kxb4 ??????
and that was it. First game of the season, arguably the worst game I played since February.
The next morning, I picked up right where I left off, a toothless game and a dumb theoretical blunder towards the end.
Two games, both against players rated about 200 points beyond me, my rating had already dropped by 50.
It did not seem like I could get out of the rut I was in, and a tailspin seemed imminent, so to avoid a dropping an even hundred more rating points, I withdrew at this point.
My next competitive game is likely going to be the first match round of the new league season. I will be playing the full league campaign for the Dublin University Ennis Shield team; here’s hoping I plug the holes in my endgame and mid-game play isn’t so flat.
