Lessons From Cap Negret

IN my round-one game, where I had black against Manuel Lozano Marqués (1635), I sacrificed a pawn in the opening, and pretty soon blundered a second one.

There was no problem recapturing one of them, but for the rest of the game I was a pawn down.

Nevertheless, I can remember thinking I had plenty of compensation, and hoped, bearing in mind the 261-rating difference, to wrangle a win.

As my blog notes to the game show, I was fooling myself.

Ridiculously, even after reaching this opposite-coloured-bishop ending a pawn down, I thought I had winning chances

I would have done well to remember David Bronstein's advice in his famous book Zurich International Chess Tournament 1953: "To lose one's objectivity is almost invariably to lose the game as well."

Fortunately, I drew the game, but it was a rotten way to start a tournament.

LESSON: it is very difficult to play well if you evaluate positions hopelessly optimistically (or hopelessly pessimistically, for that matter).