Preparing for North American Open

Hello chess players, friends, stalkers, ... After reading my brother's lengthy post about his preparation for the upcoming North American Open, I was inspired and decided to write one as well. If you want to read my brother's post, here is the link... http://www.chess.com/blog/GoogyApple42/pre-north-american-open-post  (I hope the link works )

Unlike my brother Samuel, I will be playing in the Under 2300 rating section while he is playing Under 2100, the same section as last year. Hopefully he'll win the section and $7000 (!) this year (If not, it would be kind of embarassing). Samuel and I made an interesting bet that if he does win first place, he will go bald and stay bald for a year! (not sure how the hair will grow back, but who cares?) In the past year, I have been strangely doing very well in tournaments, even when I haven't studied chess at all, except look at a few openings lines to play. Since my strategy has been working so far, I will not study for this tournament as I don't want to be tired of chess and get bored when I'm playing. 

Lately, I have been thinking hard, and I decided to quit online chess (for a few months at least). Online chess has been a heavy distraction for me when I am studying and doing homework. Also, I have noticed that playing chess online has not been very fun for me, and I spend too much time chatting. Therefore, I have made my decision to quit ICC and all other chess sites for some time. I hope that I am doing the right thing.

Samuel posted most of the openings he studied and will play at the tournament, but I will not, as I want to keep my openings secret. Overall, I have been pretty excited about this tournament, and since last year's NAO was fun, this year has to be better! My family is leaving tommorow morning, and arriving some time in the afternoon to see some shows and other attractions. Last year, we watched a magic show, which was very entertaining. Right now, I am pretty sleepy as I stayed up until 4 AM last night, and I'm planning on sleeping the whole time on the airplane. From past expierences, I try to sleep on the airplane, but I rarely get to, because the seat is always too uncomfortable and warm. Hopefully, it won't be that bad. At worst, I can sleep all day before round 1, which luckily is at night!

That's about it for the Pre-NAO post, and my next post will be after the tournament. My goal is to score at least 4/7 points and play some good games. We'll see how close I get to my goal . One more thing, after the tournament, I still have one more week of winter break, so there's something I can be happy about when the tournament is finished. I hate it when I have a bad tournament, and then school is the next day -_-

Good luck to my brother SamShe and everyone else who is playing North American Open this year!