European Championships

Thought I'd copy the post Keith Arkell put up on the ECF Forum about his performance at the European Championships. The first part of it refers to Keith's loss to the 2150-something rated Bosnian, D. Kadric:

"My opening experimantation got me in trouble early on,but by the time we got to the ending I was doing fine.The Bishop and better structure were ample comp for the ineffectual a pawn.

I just have no explanation why here,and on another couple of occasions,I made horrendous blunders in types of positions in which I was both comfortble and familiar.

Here my hand was itching to play 43 Bxf6 Kxf6 44 g5+ Kf7 Ra7 when all he can do is try to hang on.He should draw though with reasonable defence,eg as long as he deals with my threat of Rh4 to f4 +-. 44 Bd2?? instead just handed him the point .To be fair to my young opponent though,he was obviously vastly under rated,and went on to score an IM norm when he downed Alexey Slavin in the last round.

My 2 other howlers were both with Black v 2600s. Against Rotstein in round 4 I would normally play 15...Qd7 16 Ne5 Qb7 planning ...b5 with equality,but instead played 15..Qd7?? just forgetting about 16 d5;and in round 6 against Romanov after kind of outplaying him I was intending to play 25..Ne6 when he can draw at best,but suddenly changed my mind and played 25...Qa5?? simply missing the intermizzo 28 Qh7+

My overall play was ok though,and I played a couple of nice games(in rounds 3 and 11),and made a study like save in a R ending in round 10.

Because of my seeding(207 out of 400) it was hard to get passed plus one,because to get to plus 2 at any time would necessitate beating a 2600.I just wished that I had given myself more opportunities to do so though,but anyway,123rd = wasn't horrific.

Enough though about me. It was a brilliant effort by David to beat 2 strong GMs with Black in rounds 10(R+B v R!) and 11,and I'm looking forward to watching him in the play-offs..so COME ON DAVID!!"