My First Tournament Win!

This past Saturday, I had the pleasure of playing in the Joplin Summer Open in Joplin, Missouri.  The tournament was four rounds of game in 60 with a 5 second delay.  This time control is a little quick for me, but I'm happy for any chance at over-the-board play.  This was an hour drive from me, but since it's a one day tournament, driving up and back on the same day is no problem.

I arrived at about 8:20 am and checked in with the tournament director.  The word was that we would have about 16 players play in the tournament with any more than that being just people that didn't notify the director they were coming.  Still, there might be 20 or so at the start of the tournament with a little luck.

As it turned out, we started off with 17 players.  I was paired with a player rated in the low 800s in the first round.

It was a shaky start for me as I inadvertently left my opening system early on.  I improvised a pretty solid opening, though, and I'm pretty sure I was better from the outset.  Then I forgot my e-pawn was hanging.

If he took my e-pawn, I still would've been better, but I would've had to fight harder to maintain that edge rather than immediately trying to capitalize on the edge I already had. 

Luckily, he didn't take it and I got to work improving my position. Once we were into the middle game, I cracked open the position with his king in the center and pieces awkwardly placed.  

I wound up winning a couple of pawns and later on a full piece.  

However, I stupidly threw my advantage completely away by letting his king invade in the endgame when I got short on time.  I thought my king had his blocked out, but it wasn't.  

I had to fight to even hold a draw, but my opponent pressed too hard.  Afterwards, he told me he thought I would lose on time if he didn't take the draw, so he allowed me to capture the dangerous passed pawn that I was struggling against.  However, I had no problem converting the position, even with 11 seconds on my clock.  The 5 second delay was what I lived on.  I used a few seconds double-checking that I wasn't stalemating him, and he resigned with 6 seconds still on my clock.  Disaster averted!

In the second round, I played a very solid player who was very near my rating.  I felt I played extremely well in the opening and again obtained a decent edge.  As the middle game began, we wound up castling to opposite sides and my attack was much faster.  I had my opponent against the ropes and only had to play the most obvious check on the board on multiple moves in order to finish him off.  For some reason, I convinced myself that continuing to build up before finally crashing in was the right move.  I managed to get myself into a pickle and had to give up my queen for two rooks, but I was surely still winning.  I wound up going up a full piece by the time the proper endgame rolled around.  This time, I did manage to toss away the easy win and only escaped with a draw as his king gobbled my last pawn (my lone knight was not going to be enough).

As I headed to grab a quick lunch, it was hard to be either happy or disappointed with the way the morning went.  I had 1.5 out of 2 points, but I should've easily won both games.  I had to tighten my play up for the second half of the day.

In the third round, I was paired against a young man I had played about a year ago.  We played to a draw, though I'm pretty sure I tossed away a win in that game, too.  In this game, I blitzed out one of the main lines of my Scandinavian Defense, while he struggled with each move.  I managed to have a time advantage after the opening for once.  I had a feeling I knew exactly when and how he was going to deviate from my opening repertoire and started mentally preparing for my guess before we got there.  I knew I didn't have a response prepared for what I thought he was going to do, so I needed to start thinking about it now.  It was actually a little funny to me that he was analyzing a position several moves behind the one I was thinking about.  I was exactly right, too.

I took a few extra minutes when he deviated to try to devise the correct plan.  I did decently, getting the first few moves of what I should be doing right, but I didn't find the right longer term plan.  I know now exactly how to handle what he did.  If I'd looked at that idea before-hand I would've gotten a very strong position right out of the opening.  As it was, I think I had just equalized.  A few moves later, though, I think he had created some weaknesses and I had solidified my position enough that I had a small edge.  I was feeling pretty good, and that's when I completely under-estimated one of his ideas, allowing him to win a pawn and get a pretty good position.  I fought as hard as I could, but I'm pretty sure I was completely lost.  However, he blundered and let me get some counter-play.  Finally, at the end, he blundered into a mate in two.  I think he thought he was going to checkmate me, but the position was actually a draw if he makes the best move.  However, the move that threatened to checkmate me allowed the mate in two.  He jumped on it without considering my reply, and he was devastated.  I felt pretty bad for him, but I'm now sitting at 2.5/3 and one game away from winning the tournament (nobody had 3/3), though I didn't really even know that at the time.

In the final round I was paired with another 2.5/3 rated almost 400 points higher than me.  Talk about a back and forth game!  In this game, I got an advantage out of the opening (A Queen's Gambit Accepted), missed a clear game-winning tactic that I knew was there but just couldn't find, still managed to get a winning position, tossed it away back to basically even by missing a tactic, then incorrectly sacrificed a piece for a pawn (thinking it was back rank mate if he took it, but it wasn't!), and regained the piece through some tactical bluffing, finally emerging to a two rooks and four pawns vs. two rooks and three pawns endgame (I'm up a pawn).  Ridiculous!  He offered me a draw since we were the last two playing and all rook endings are drawn, but I was having none of it.  I managed to play a pretty darn good endgame for once and hammered home the win.

After everyone left (except the tournament director, who I am friends with), I collapsed into the floor exhausted and very happy.  I asked if I happened to win prize money, and he looked at me like I was crazy.  "Uh, yeah, you just won the tournament!"  I honestly didn't even realize it at the time.  I helped him carry his equipment back to the car and got in my car for the hour drive home.

What a great day!  I had been waiting for everything to finally come together in one tournament for me, and it finally had.  My rating shot up 91 points, and I moved up from Class C to Class B.

I will post the games themselves soon, but I'd like a chance to add my thoughts before I do so.  If you'd really like to see them, here is a link to the raw pgn:

Games

TIL #2

Today I learned a position in the Lev Alburt Chess Training Pocket Book has an incomplete answer.  The position, which I was checking out during a break in action at work today, is shown below:

As a tactical problem, the solution jumped out pretty immediately.  Rxd6 Rxd6 e5 seems obvious.  I felt, however, that the next couple of moves were also very important.  For instance, after Rxd6 Rxd6 e5 Ke6, it is extremely important to capture the rook with the pawn and not the bishop.  If Bxd6, after f6, the game is drawn!  Instead, white must capture with the pawn, exd6 after which the win is trivial.

Photo-Blog on Tumblr

I've started a separate blog for just the image stuff in my chess world.  Pictures of projects, study setups, equipment, and maybe some of me playing in tournaments (though those are difficult because I'm usually by myself at tournaments and nobody else cares to take pictures of me playing or at least share them with me if they happen to catch me in a shot.  We'll see how that aspect goes.

Here's the link: http://omgchessblog.tumblr.com/

Three Coats of Polyurethane Later

And, I'm finished!  I didn't ruin anything, but I think I did sand through the finish a little bit after trying to smooth out the raised paint edges after two coats of polyurethane.  It's ok, I'm still really happy.

Also, I discovered that lowering the leaves of the kitchen table allows this table top to fit right over the top and around the kitchen table, basically converting it into a dream chess table.  I'm still going to take it to school and use it there, semi-permanently, but having the kitchen table option at home is pretty awesome.

Works great for Sinquefield Cup viewing, too!

First game on hand-made tabletop!

I took the tabletop to school today to kind of show it off and try a few games on it.  I told everyone to be very careful since I hadn't applied a protective layer to the surface yet, but I played a game with one of my students.

The best part is I realized that if I sat the board down on top of two old bookshelves I had sitting in my closet, it is a perfect height to play on and very stable.  The boards around the bottom rim of the tabletop keep it in place nicely, too.  This would be perfect!

I took black so I could try out my new Scandinavian Defense line.  I got a nice game and eventually won a piece and my opponent resigned.  I took a photo of the first ever game on it.

Dual-Chessboard Project (DIY!)

I found a piece of wood in my garage that used to be the bottom of a baby crib. We had gotten rid of the baby crib a few months earlier (trash!), but apparently had forgotten to throw out this bottom board. When I noticed it, I immediately thought it would make a very attractive table top with two chess boards painted onto it. It's just how my mind works. I've been looking for some sort of a fun project with wood and paint that I might even get some use out of, and this seemed to be perfect.

I wish I had taken a picture of the board before I started on it, but I didn't think to do it. There were some warning stickers glued all over the board, so the first step was to figure out how to remove those. It was much harder than I thought it would be. Peeling and scraping was just not going to work. I tried just directly sanding them off with very little success. Finally, I thought to use google. Apparently, the trick is to warm a little bit of vinegar and rub it on the target area. I was amazed as it came off with just a light brushing almost immediately. First problem solved. This might actually work.

 I went to the store and picked up a few materials. I still expected something to cause this whole project to grind to a halt. I'd never done anything like this, and I had no idea what to expect. I picked up all the sandpaper I needed, some wood stain and a brush, and the three colors of spray paint I'd chosen.

 I sanded the board down with each of the different grits of sandpaper until it was very smoooth and brought the board outside to apply the wood stain. I actually have tried to use wood stain before, but that was a disaster because I didn't even read anything. This time, I at least knew how to do it. It seemed to go pretty well, though I don't think I wiped the stain off as thoroughly as I should've. It was here that I started taking pictures of the project, so here is the board after the wood stain went on:

The coloring didn't turn out to be as consistent as I'd like, but that got better as the stain dried.  Next, I measured out two 18" x 18" squares and centered them on each half of the board.  I taped around the board and covered everything but the squares and spray painted them gray.  I was pretty happy with how the board areas looked after I removed the masking:

After I waited a couple of days for the paint to dry, I drew light pencil lines to mark where the chess board's light and dark squares should go.  I taped over every other rank and file of each of the chessboards, leaving 16 of the dark squares exposed.  I painted the exposed areas oxford blue.

There was a lot more bleeding under the tape from the spray paint on these last two steps than I would like, and I kind of resigned myself to the fact that none of my lines would be as clean as I wanted them to be.  After the first set of dark squares dried, I covered the other set and painted the final 16 dark squares on each board.

Peeling off the masking tape after this last step revealed I'd made an error and had made one row of dark squares too big!  I'm not sure if I took a strip of tape off to reapply it and then never did, or what.  I really do not know how the error happened, but it clearly did!  I was pretty pleased with the rest of it, though.

I had to take a little extra time to fix the mistake, but it wasn't too bad.  All I had left to do was the 1/2" black border to really set things off.

When I peeled the paint off of the last bit of the black border, I was a little disappointed because there was even more bleeding than usual.  Then I realized that it didn't matter that much, because this board really popped!  I brought it inside and put it on a table and started setting up two sets of chess pieces on it for a little photo session.

Sitting down at the table for the first time with all the pieces set up was an almost surreal experience.  I had made something that looked really nice with my own hands, sure, but another part of the feeling was that the colors of this chess board had only existed on my computer screen before now.  I don't think there was any way to get these two colors on a real chess board before.  I have used this blue and gray chess board online for years.  Having a nice, real version of the chess board in front of me felt so incredibly right to me.  It was like being home for the first time in a way.

Technically, I'm not done with the project.  I will be putting a few coats of polyurethane on it to smooth the surface and to protect it.  However, the current state of this dual chessboard is quite satisfying, and I'm going to enjoy it for a day or two first just in case I ruin it with my first ever attempt at applying polyurethane!

Training Diary #2

Since my last entry, a lot has changed.  First of all, I've decided I just really don't like How to Reassess Your Chess.  I cannot get through it.  The more I tried, the more I remembered I just really don't like it.  I could get into the reasons for this, but that is probably better for a different blog entry or article.  I have spent some time looking for other things and settled on a course I had forgotten I even owned.  Igor Smirnov's Your Winning Plan, which was suggested to me by a very strong player a few years ago.  While sampling all the resources I had trying to find something to replace How to Reassess Your Chess, I found myself riveted by this one.  So, that is my new tome.  Hopefully, I won't be getting into the rut of starting book after book without finishing.  I will try not to do that.  So far, I like this one so much I'm committing to finishing it without even alternating weeks with the endgame book!  I've also got pages of notes I've taken on this course alone.  Those are definitely good signs.

I have been plugging away with tactics and openings, also.  In my last post I mentioned that I would be trying to find a way to detail my progress with the basic tactics that I drill for speed and recognition.  I use Anki flashcard software for that purpose.  I have a set of 1001 tactics from a popular tactics book called "Tactics Time" that I am converting into flashcards.  So far, I have 250 of them converted and I'm drilling those using spaced repetition in Anki.  If you are familiar with Anki, these stats may make sense.  If not, it may be gibberish, but here they are so far, current as of today:

The other side of my tactics training has to do with Chess Tempo.  I solve problems there daily, but I don't have a set routine of how many or anything.  Basically, I just go do some problems whenever I feel like it.  I should improve this by making some sort of schedule or quota, but so far, I haven't.  It's somewhat easier to track my progress with that, because the rating graph will make more sense to more people.  The thing to remember with these is that I do not focus on speed here.  I focus only on accuracy--calculation/visualization, etc.  The pattern recognition I build up with past Chess Tempo problems and the Anki flashcards should help as well, but I do not use Chess Tempo to assist in building patterns primarily, it's just a side-effect.

I have been playing long games as often as I can, both online and over-the-board.  I have committed to analyzing at least one game per week as fully as I can.  Sticking to this one isn't hard because it's something I like doing, anyway.  Some examples of the analysis I've been doing:

Just snippets of the full analysis.  I'm still working out how I want to format the analyses for actual publication.  The latter example is a pdf created with Open Office.  It looks very nice, but it is very time-consuming to make.  Analyzing in Scid vs. PC is fine, but it doesn't look as nice and there's no way to publish it without just pasting a PGN file somewhere (not ideal if you want people to actually read it).  Still working on this problem.

As always, comments and encouragement are appreciated!