After sharing the first place in this weekend’s Deltalift Open in Tylösand I feel safe to say that I did indeed get over the debacle from Norrköping. However, my reason for saying this is not so much that I won, but rather because, as I got up the next morning, I discovered that I could have worn the same shirt for the second day in a row (which would clearly have been out of the question had I been nervous the day before). I did not think about what had happened in Norrköping.
When it comes to the quality of my game there were others who played more interesting and possibly better games. Both Pontus Sjödahl and Juan Bellon played several interesting games, but didn’t manage to score as much as they might have wished from them. In the end it was Emanuel Berg and I who stumbled into first and second place. I will show you what I mean with “stumbled”:
Not the most straight forward win and quite symptomatic of my play. Emanuel got away with something similar against Juan Bellon, although his final combination was impressive:
Had Bellon and Sjödahl held their ground in these games, we would have seen a different result in the end. Sjödahl played many good games, but made some simple tactical errors that ruined the result. Bellon gave the general impression of being on the way up and he played more strong players than anyone else in the tournament. Here is his game against Stellan Brynell:
Considering how few foreign players that found their way to the tournament I guess one might call Deltalift Open a well kept Swedish secret. It is held at a spa-hotel, by one of southern Sweden’s most beautiful beaches (although slightly off-season) and their team of competent organizers and arbiters make it a delight to play there, whatever the final result may be. I am reasonably sure there will be another tournament there next year. Don’t miss it.