Lessons From Benidorm III

NOTES to my round-four game - I took a halfpoint bye in round three - tell a story that will be familiar to most clubplayers.

I had black in a London System against Ireland's Pat O'Hanlon (1794), and for the first 32 moves it was a positional struggle, in which I annotated five moves with !?, but none with so much as a ?!, never mind a ?

Tactics started when White pushed his g pawn in this position, which is completely equal, according to Stockfish17.1 and Dragon1

The game lasted 14 more moves, four of which earnt a ?, one a ?! and one - the lone one of the game - an !

Clearly such annotations, even when backed by engine analysis, are subjective, but the contrast between the 32 moves of positional chess and the 14 of tactical chess could hardly be starker.

LESSON: at the highest levels chess may well no longer be "99% tactics" (if it ever was), but at lower levels 99% may be an underestimate.