I had my first experience of competitive OTB chess last Friday and what a fantastic time I had. What gave me the confidence to even think about entering such a competition which included club champions and national champions, well in a nutshell 'Chess.com' gave me the skills and know how to take my online training and pit them against some of the top players in my works region. 

6 players in total entered so we played 5 games with no notations at 30 mins clocked. My inexperience at OTB showed its true colours as in my first game I charged in like a bat out of hell, thinking I had to play quick to be in with a chance, my opponent followed suit and we engaged in what can only be termed as a blitz match, to all those that know me, blitz play is definitely not my strongest play (yet). I took my opponent to the wire but one small error cost me the match. Brilliant game .

After finishing my first game I looked around at the other players games and saw a stark difference in their speed of play as they were taking their time and thinking deeply about their moves.

The clock tick tocking away didn't seem to phase them and I was a little impressed by their calm pensiveness. I took this practise into my next game and started out with strong measured play, totally zoning the clock out so I could concentrate on the game in hand. This proved to be an absolute gift as the game seemed to last forever and my opponent was definitely feeling a little uneasy with my play. Towards the end of this game, I had a great winning position and focussed intently on its formation, but alas I missed one crucial piece of the puzzle which I could kick myself for, as my opponent capitalised on my glich and went on to take the victory .

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I had watched my next opponents games previously and knew he liked to play old school chess moves e4 d4 knight and bishop advancement to control the centre, so I decided to come at him a little more aggressively to upset his rythmn of normality. This worked for a long period throughout the game, putting him on the defensive and making him feel plenty out of sorts. Yet again, I had the winning formation to take the game but missed my chance at the final hurdle. What a great game experience .

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 My fourth match saw me take a more measured approached as I surprised my opponent and myself when I capitalised on my winning formation to take a comfortable victory 

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Then on to my 5th and final match with another club champion, this was a fantastic game as we countered and double countered each other until yet again I hampered my winning position and gave victory to my opponent. An excellent game filled with loads of strategy and cunning 

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My opponents all stated to me that,

'For your first OTB, You are a very strong player, you learned how to play like that on line you would do very well in OTB comps'.

I have taken this as a massive compliment and even though games were lost I can hold my head high with the knowledge that what I have learned from Chess.com has made me a formidable opponent to play...win or lose.

So what is the difference between OTB and online chess?

'I entered OTB with a different mindset of how to play the game, once I settled into my online strategies/concepts I began to see the light at the end of the tunnel, albeit too late in most of my games. The difficulty I had was I am used to online turn based games where you can make a move the next day or two weeks time, you have time to analyse potential play strategies, time which you don't have in OTB. I've loved my turn based experience and will continue to develop this part of my game as it has afforded me good skills as detailed above, if I am going to continue in OTB, my next stage of development is to work on speeding up my thought processes in 'Live' 30 min chess matches on Chess.com' 

Chess.com Forum Post Is OTB easier than online?

For my OTB future, I'll take inspiration from the skillful Alexandra Kostenuik