The middle: ‘Draw with black, win with white!’

I once got a piece of advice from Manuel Weeks for how to deal with round robins and put together an opening repertoire – ‘Draw with black, win with white!’.  Basically, a player should structure his openings so that he can comfortably equalise with the black pieces, while push for an opening advantage in the white games.  Sound advice, and a philosophy followed by many of the world’s top players for their super-tournaments.

Unfortunately, this is not a super tournament.  Things are a little different in Swiss tournaments in Australia, and the advice doesn’t work so well.

So far I’ve drawn three games with black and picked up wins with the three with the white pieces – but that’s nowhere near good enough for this sort of tournament. Top seed Zhao has won all six of his games to take a commanding lead, while second place Mouthun has won two with black and three with white.  Both of them have played daring, attacking chess, taking risks and maximising their chances of getting a decisive result.  And it’s paid off.

Meanwhile, I’ve been stuck playing boring, drawn out endgames, without much success.  Nobody wants to be imprisoned indoors nutting out complex rook endings while being tempted by gorgeous, sunny, Rotorua lake views out the window.  Those sort of realisations make for lousy motivation, and lousy motivation makes for lousy chess. 

In other, good news, however, Tritty continues to impress.  The man has put a lot of effort into his chess over the past year, and it’s finally starting to pay dividends.  The draw with me coupled with a win over Jimmy has made him the clear winning in our in-house derby, and a desperate swindle this evening keeps him in the hunt for the elusive International Master title.  It’s been quite a trip for Tritty thus far.

Also, did I mention how tall he is? 😉