OJ vs fussylizard: 1-0

Sorry for the delay in my report, but I've been busy (who isn't these days?)...

Last Thursday I got to face OJ's new opening with white- the English. Fortunately it transposed into the Queen's Gambit Declined. I remembered some of the theory from Sadler's book, and ended up playing a Lasker's Defense. I worked into a technically won game with an extra pawn and a queenside pawn majority. Unfortunately I had blown through most of my 2 hours of time and ended up resigning in a lost position during the time scramble. Since OJ plays at blitz speed all the time, he was playing full strength while my play dropped dramatically. Even if I had sufficient time, I'm not sure if my current level of technique would have been sufficient to convert it into a win, but I wish I could have tried.

So the good news is I played a solid game. The bad news is that my time management was terrible, so that is an area of improvement. I just have to stop agonizing over so many moves, especially in quiet positions, and just play something reasonable and get on with it. It's that perfectionist in me wreaking havoc with my game.

I don't have much experience playing in closed games or games where slow attacks must be built up (as in last week's accelerated dragon), so I'm actually glad OJ has been steering us from the usual open tactical games we've mostly been playing. I guess his strategy of switching up the openings has been working (I'm .5 out of 2 for our last two games), but I'm learning new stuff and playing reasonably, so I'm having a lot of fun.

Anyway, I'll post the game later. I've finished my own analysis, but I've not yet run the game through Fritz (I always comment first without the computer analysis). Once I do that I'll update my comments (if necessary) and post the game. Last week Fritz didn't tell me anything I didn't already uncover in my own analysis, so I hope that means my analysis is getting better!

Update: Here's our last two games. I made them downloadable per zeon's request. The game described above is the second one on the page.