Allright, it's time for another tournament! Six months since my last one, no thanks to a certain variant of a certain virus which shall go unnamed. This time it's the Indy FIDE $10,000 Tournament.
I'm writing this introduction a few days before the tournament begins. I definitely am starting to feel the same nervous excitement as last time, but I thankfully feel a little bit more comfortable this go around. I understand a few more things as far as what to expect and what the experience might be like. I'm prepared with my own chess set and clock, I know what it's like to play two or three games in a day, I know to check-in at a certain time, I know that Indianapolis is in a different timezone than St. Louis (yikes, glad I remembered that). Just for fun, here's the laundry list of questions I had going into my last weekend tournament:
What's it like to play three games in a day? Then two more the next day? My only other OTB games were a maximum of two hours. These games might be 3 or 4 hours long, oh gawd. How mentally-taxing will this be? Do I need my own scoresheets? Is there a larger tournament strategy I should know? Should I take strategic byes? What do I do in between games? How do they announce the first round? Do I just chill in the lobby until something happens? With hotel and entry fee, this was a few hundred bucks, What if I lose every f***ing game and I want to quit chess after this? Am I putting too much pressure on some silly little tournament?
I think my nerves for this tournament come entirely from performance expectations. It is hard to set aside all the "what-ifs" that I play really well and gain a ton of points. That's just me being honest. I know the correct perspective is to simply go in with full concentration, play the best I can, and be glad that by the time I'm driving back home, I'll have five scoresheets that should be "worth their weight in gold" as GM Kraai claims. That's what I'm going to tell myself. Don't worry about the outcomes. Focus on playing the best games I can and avoid unforced errors so I obtain five highly instructive games. If I do that, that's a win. Of course, taking 5/5 would also be a win too :)
That wraps up my pre-tournament feelings. Hopefully from here on out for any future tournaments, I'll solely focus on the games in my recaps.
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Games are G/90 with 30s increment.
Schedule:
- Rd. 1 Friday 7PM
- Rd. 2 Saturday 10:30 am
- Rd. 3 Saturday 4:30 pm
- Rd. 4 Sunday 9 am
- Rd. 5 Sunday 2:30 pm
Pre-tournament rating: 1385 (P11)
I'll be playing in the NOVICE (1301-1600) section. Like my last tournament roundup, I will not use this space for deep analysis but for broad notes on the general tournament atmosphere and my mood during the weekend.
Game 1
Won. I had the white pieces in a slav against an unrated player. I talked with my opponent beforehand and he said he had never played in an OTB tournament but he was rated around 2000 online. I didn't ask what website or time control, but my thoughts were "Huh, he sounds like me when I first played, decent rating online and probably expecting to do well personally, but had never played in a serious game over-the-board. Although his 2000 rating is a little scary." The game was even in the middle, but I got into a losing position due to an a4 pawn push that was too aggressive. I kept fighting anyway, despite being down a pawn and down on the clock. For the endgame, I bounced around one to two minutes while my opponent was hanging around 50-ish minutes on their clock so it was serious time pressure for the final twenty moves. He grabbed a kingside pawn, then a second, but I got a passed pawn. At one point, he made an illegal move (moving his king into check by my rook on the sixth rank) and I believe that flustered him. In hindsight, we should have paused the clock and got the Tournament Director because, as I learned later in the tournament, I would have got some time added to my clock. However, I just said to take the move back and play on. Unfortunately for my opponent, he did not take a few minutes to calm down and re-assess. I believe he was still winning if he slowed down and thought, but he was playing very quickly, presumably in an attempt to keep the time pressure on me. I was able to queen and I quickly had a mate in two. Immediately after the game, my opponent acknowledged they should have slowed down. This was a lucky one.
Lessons: Don't play crazy pawn moves that "mostly seem okay and feel like the right plan", follow your calculation! And keep trying even if you have a minute on your clock. I should have lost this game but I kept trying and I won.
Game 2
Won. I was black in a King's Indian Attack against a 1053 rated player. We traded pieces in the middlegame and I eventually got into a better ending in which I had central file control with doubled rooks on a weak d-pawn. I'm currently in the middle of analyzing the ending, but I made a blunder that should have ended up in a drawing pawn ending. However, with a mistake from my opponent, I was able to trade off rooks and get my king much more active to the point I could gobble a few pawns and I had some passers that forced resignation. Well, technically resignation is never forced, as I learned in round five.
Lessons: Getting to a better ending is one thing, but winning rook endgames is tough, as I'm learning in my analysis of this round. And just like my last tournament, it feels so good to get a few early wins in these five-round tournaments.
Game 3
Lost. I had the black pieces in a Sicilian Dragon against a 1512 rated player. My opponent this round was the first child I played. We went into a mainline open Sicilian which almost never happens at my rating online! That's a big lesson after a few tournaments: know the ideas in your mainlines. In my experience, you won't see a lot of weird stuff in openings at classical tournaments. This player played quickly and his attack was faster while I had little idea what to do. I knew in this type of game, we both had to attack, but I probably missed my one chance I had to start my own queenside initiative. I had to seriously defend for the rest of the game. I thought I did okay (I haven't analyzed this one yet) but I dropped a pawn as his attack seemed to be fizzling and it got worse as my structure was weakened. After the game, he said I defended well which was nice to hear but overall this game will be a good lesson in how to play a mainline dragon. I think there will be instructive mistakes. I played out some of the ending but he had two passed pawns on the wing with a knight helping defend everything while I had a bishop and my pawns weren't going anywhere. I resigned once he showed some technique in advancing his pawns.
Lessons: This kid, and most kids at this level, play fast. They'll take a minute or two maximum per move but that doesn't mean you have to. They will make their move and if you don't respond in roughly the same thinking-time they took, they will most likely stand up and walk around or start fidgeting. Don't let it bother you. Don't assign titles of child prodigy on each and every kid that knows their openings and plays very quickly. Don't play hastily in return. None of this will help your game at all.
That did it for the Saturday. I went off to get a beer at the hotel bar then grab some food and go to my room. On Sunday, the games were at 9:00 and 2:30 and after that last game, I had a 3+ hour drive back home, so it was going to be a long day...
Game 4
Won. I was white in a King's Indian Defense against a 1470 rated player. My queenside attack was faster in this one and I believe my opponent just didn't fully pay attention to my plans. I went up the exchange and after trades and grabbing another pawn, my opponent resigned. Now I officially felt very good about the tournament since I was on 3/4 and I was guaranteed a plus score.
Game 5
Won. I had the white pieces in a KID against a 1618 rated player. Yet again, this was a kid that played quite quickly and would get bored if I didn't match his speed. In the early middlegame, he snapped off a pawn which surprised me. This reminds me of an earlier lesson to never designate genius-status to kids that play a move you missed. He grabbed a central pawn with his knight after a ten-second think, and my first thought was, "Uhhh, that hangs the knight, I can take it with my queen." Then a moment later, I saw that if I do that, he has a bishop move which would trap and win the queen. So the realization was setting in. "Whoa, he snapped that pawn off pretty quickly, he's very tactically aware and I had no sign of danger regarding that pawn. Yikes, I slipped up."
And yet, after nearly resigning myself to the fact that I'm down a full pawn out of the opening, I was able to calm down and find my own little pawn-grab intermezzo tactic that he surely hadn't seen as displayed by his slower play following my move. So we were back to even material and later in the middlegame, tactics worked in my favor and I won the exchange. I was totally winning in an endgame but I had a rook and maybe four pawns versus a bishop and two pawns. My opponent played the game out, so it took another 30 minutes or more for me to trade down successfully, promote to queen, then mate. All in all, a three hour game that probably should have been a little over two hours but that's totally within his rights to play it out. I surely was a tad nervous mating with the queen. From my opponent's perspective, I suppose the ending of a three hour game after a full weekend tournament is just about the best time to hope for a silly stalemate gift.
Lessons: Don't freak out if you miss something. If you find good moves, look for better ones. Don't psych yourself out or let choices of your opponent mess with you.
Conclusion
So I finished with 4.0/5 and a share of second place. I missed out on the U1450 prize due to tiebreaks but I still took home $140 (let's not talk about entry fees and hotel/fuel costs haha). My rating should go up to 1509 (P16) when USCF publishes them in a few weeks. It feels great to have two successful tournaments this year. Still, as I always say, I know that a rough tournament experience is coming at some point. Chess is awesome when you're winning but never underestimate the existential dread when you have a string of poor performances.
Broadly speaking, I think my biggest lesson for this tournament is:
"A lot of effort goes a long way."
Note that I don't say a LITTLE effort, but a lot. Sure I'm being cute, but the point is to try very hard in your games. I think that's why a lot of players don't succeed in the lower rungs of the ratings ladder. I heard a few stories of people finishing sixty-move games with more time on their clock than what they started with. They're often happy playing quickly and never grinding out deeper calculations at a critical juncture. Yes in my games, it helps to know some opening stuff, endgame strategy, and have knowledge and calculation skills. But I think some are not using their "general competitive skills" sufficiently. These are non-chess things that have given me victories at this level: Maximum effort, not moving as soon as I see the move, mental toughness, positive self-talk, and patience. I think a lot of games can be won with more focused effort and playing at your comfort level. It's absurd to me when nearby games wrap up in the first 20 or 30 minutes of the round. People are packing up their sets while I'm thinking about my eighth move! I put in a lot of effort in training, wouldn't I feel really shitty if I drove for hours, spent this money and lost in ten moves in the first round?! Honor the training you've done and try your best for every move of every game!
Gotta go, I have five long classical games to analyze.
