Here are three games from the first day of the British Rapidplay.  I started the day with a smooth tactical smash of a Scheveningen Sicilian.  Here it is:

I followed this by being slowly outplayed in round 2, and making a draw from what had been a better position in round 3. In round 4 my opponent showed me the dangers of playing the King’s Indian Defence without being really familiar with all the major book lines:

This was followed by a quick loss in round 5, which I may show later, and then in round 6 I was paired with Andrew Baxter, the only person who had beaten me in the previous year’s tournament. The game was stodgy and slow moving – hardly typical of the King’s Indian Defence. I won a pawn, and my opponent was getting visibly frustrated with the back-and-forth piece shuffling as I slowly went about trying to win. Unfortunately, just as I was making progress I blundered a piece. Here’s the game (annotations may follow):

I’ll post some more annotated games from the tournament later. My annotations to these games have not been checked with a computer, and as always I’d be glad to have comments or suggestions about where I might have played better.