Nigel Davies has taken to posting his wins against amateur players in local league matches. Perhaps as a GM he is proud of such achievements, who knows. To balance the books see this small example of how easy it is for a professional player to come to grief .... against an amateur.
Referring to player intuition he says, 'It is interesting that a player's 'intuition' normally improves with age (experience) whilst their tactical ability will tend to deteriorate.'
Well, in the position below Nigel's intuition deserted him completely; he gets out-smarted by a simple knight manoeuvre and following a disastrous blunder, is mated. This must have come as a great shock bearing in mind that his opponent, Jonathan Blackburn, was rated nearly 300 Elo points fewer than him at the time. This must be one of the most humiliating defeats he's ever had.
Black: Jonathan Blackburn (2196) - Atticus 1
White: Nigel Davies (2477) - Widnes 1Black has just played 33...Nce5. A very good centralising move, connecting both knights and threatening mate in 1. White, after a few minutes thought, played the comical and disastrous 34. Nf6?? allowing the very embarrassing 34...Qh3 mate!
No doubt Nigel spent very little time looking for excuses for this turn of events as he once admitted, ‘One very important aspect of actually achieving something is, I believe, the ability to avoid making excuses, in all their guises.’
It’s just a shame such sentiments don’t apply to his use of mobile phones.
