My Tournament at the State Championships!

2014 State Championships

Hello Everybody! I recently (2 weeks ago) played in the 2014 State Chess Championships and had a nice result, getting $300 cash and more importantly, good chess experience!

     I was extremely nervous to compete because this was my first time playing in a large state event (and in the open section).

     I, having just recently started playing in official OTB tournaments had a rating of 1348. Because of this, I had imagined my first round to be easy, however, the pairings were excellerated and I got paired with a 1650.  Darn it! I was a little phyched out, however I played O.K. and managed a draw. Here it is:

Phew, I scraped by that one! Next, I played a young and talented 1550 who was only eight years old. She knew the opening very well and crushed my passive play, however, after she grew impatient with her pawn thrusts and went greedely for a "deadly" pawn, it was over. I felt bad to steal a win from her, especially when she started crying. . Here's my lucky win:

I was feelin' good after that squeak-by. I knew I was due white next round and was more relaxed knowing I have only two more rounds and that my rating couldn't really drop! I quickly changed that thinking when I saw who I was paired with. I was to play white against a 2267 NM. I thought I would play aggresively and keep a positive attitude. I played well and lost a good game.

Here it is:

Man! I was winning in the opening and I let the game just slip away slowly. Oh well, it was still a good game.

For the last round, I had to play an 1876. I had looked to see his rating, however I read the chart wrong and I thought he was a 1500! I played sloppily and he was crushing me. Then, he played a move like a complete ameature and gave me the game. After the game, I found out his true rating and was elated! .

Here is the last round:

Wow. I had some good luck that tournament. My rating skyrocketed to 1616 and is still on an incline. I won second and $300 only losing to an NM!!!.

Thanks for reading, and any advice/analysis is greatly appreciated!

P.S. Games were G60/5.

Oops, its 2267 and not 2268. Sorry!

Congratulations on making second place. I looked at the game with the NM and it appears you had an opportunity to get a large advantage with 16.Be4!, but after that it looks like he slowly outplayed you. Still "winning in the opening" seems to be a slight exaggeration as this opportunity was not fully exploited; however, recognizing the fallibility of +2200 players in your own games is a big step forward.

Thanks. Be4 does look better, although I don't see the win. I agree I may have exaggerated my chances, however, It's best to remain optomistic .

I think you would do better to never look at ratings until after the tournament if you can avoid it. Or at least until after the game.

congrats you did very well

In your game vs the NM, you surely had a great position, not winning tho

One move that's kinda hard to see at first is 17.Nh4! with idea of Nf5....and black can't stop it!

17..g6 18.Nxg6! with you eventually getting three pawns for the piece and a strong attack.

Black has to play some passive move and allow Nf5 when white has a large positional advantage

Oh wow, that is strong...I wish I had seen that.

Wow.You increased 250+ in a Single Tournament!

You must be provisional.

I'll make some comments on each of your games that you posted. Given that there are four games for me to go over, however, I likely won't make many in variation-heavy in-depth comments. You'll probably want to have someone else go through your games more thoroughly for future improvement, however.

Also, not to intentionally be too annoying, but I believe you meant accelerated (as opposed to excellerated) pairing, and optimistic (as opposed to optomistic).

Game #1 comments:

2...e6 - black officially establishes himself as playing a traditional Queen 'Gambit' Declined.
3.e3 - Nc3 and Nf3 are some of the main book moves here. The text move is certainly playable...just not terribly ambitious.
6.Be2 - Ideally, white shouldn't move his light-square bishop until black has already played dxc4. This way white can save himself a tempo by playing Bxc4 in one move. Often black will delay the capture until after white has already moved his light square bishop, but the point is that in positions like this, white's light square bishop should be one of the last pieces white should move. Therefore, I believe 6.Nf3 was called for here.
It's also worth noting that knights typically need to be developed to be of much use at all. The same is less true of bishops...yet another reason to develop a knight before a bishop. Exceptions should only be done for concrete reasons.
19.Bxd5 - I'm not sure that giving up one of your bishops was truly called for here, just to make a cheap mate threat. Your opponent stopped it with ...f6 (arguably a weakness near his king), but frankly, I'm not sure it was worth it.
While it's true that the bishop pair tends not to be that much of an advantage at club level (since club players typically don't have the technique of professional players), I still would be a bit hesitant to forfeit the bishop pair willy nilly.
21.Qc1 - Qc2 might be a tad better, as it leaves the rook on a1 with more freedom of movement. And hence, it should be easier to develop than after the text move. If ...Rac8, then Qd1.
White looks to have absolutely zero opening advantage from this position.
24...Bb7 - Strikes me as inferior move, as white isn't truly threatening to play Nxd5 anyway (else ...Rxc2). 24...Bf3 was worth considering, with the possible idea Qh5 and trying for a checkmate on g2.
At any rate, white has decidedly weak light squares around his king at this point, and his absence of a light square bishop does not help him.
25...Qe8 - Another inferior move by black, I reckon. Given that white has weakened his king side light squares, he should be trying more to exploit this. 25...h5, with the idea of trying to weaken the white king via h4, hxg3, and Bxg3 (if necessary) looks like a possible plan.
All this move seems to do (that I can tell) is re-protect his rooks on the back rank. In other words, an unnecessarily passive move.
28.f4 - Long term, this is a very risky move, as it creates further king side weaknesses, and weakend e3 in particular. It might be a decent move in the given position (I'm too lazy to calculate I admit), but one must be aware of the long term impacts of pawn moves.
31...Rd7 - Preparing Qd8 and trying to take 'control' of the d-file. Which isn't a terribly ambitious plan, but I'm not sure if black has much better.

The end diagram looks to me like black is at least somewhat better (amd more likely a lot better), given his possession of the two bishops (an advantage that's most salient in the endgame, since bishops tend to be better endgame pieces than knights, barring a few situations here and there) the fact that e3 is a weakness for white that is somewhat awkward/will take a few tempi to solve, and the fact that white's queen side pawns are on light squares. In other words, white's queen side pawns aren't terribly easy to defend as white and black, by contrast, should be able to attack them fairly easily (Bb7-Bd5-Bb3).

In sum: looks to me like black was quite a bit better for most of that game. However, he chose some passive moves at times that threw away some of the more ambitious opportunities that he probably had. Meaning you were somewhat lucky to have drawn that.

Couldn't disagree more with this comment, as a lot of 'practical' decisions about certain moves that you intend to make really should reflect your opponent's rating, and how you think that player is likely to respond.

For example, opening choices. Against weaker opposition, you're much more likely to be able to get away with playing some kind of tricky/offbeat opening move/line, even if objectively it isn't best. Anything that you know better than your opponent is a good opening line!

Thanks for your excellent analysis. I appreciate the time and effort put in!

I remember you were nervous about playing youngsters so finding yourself up against an eight year old was a tough break. I would not have known what to do about the tears. My instincts are to give the child a hug but that is not acceptable these days. I guess some kind words about how well she played would be all you could do.

Congratulations on your splendid result. :) I don't know what might work best as regards knowing or not knowing your opponents' rating but you had a very good result knowing the ratings so stick with that I guess.

Good luck in your next event.

Why should your moves reflect your opponents rating? You should make the best move possible all the time. You arent going to get better by trying cheap tricks against lower rated players and you also will not get better being afraid to make certain moves against stronger players.If you dont know your opponents rating you will play "your" game.

About ratings: It can interesting and useful to gauge the strength of the opponent from the moves during the game. I play honestly and try to find the strongest moves, so I have no interest in cheap tricks, whoever the opponent. That said, if I sense the opponent is weaker, I'll probably be more inclined to keep tension in the position to create more opportunities for mistakes.

Ratings can be misleading. Rising juniors are likely stronger in areas of their game than their ratings would suggest, but they usually have misperceptions in their positional judgment that can be exploited. So I'd recommend to focus on more on moves than ratings, since it yields more useful information!

Emmanuel Lasker (a former World Chess Champion) would likely disagree with you.

Aside from the fact that GMs themselves routinely make opening choices based on their opponent's rating, let's take a hypothetical example. Let's say you arrive at a chess position where you have to make a choice: either you play the objectively "best" move, but doing so requires you jump into some messy tactical complications (which you may not escape from unscathed). Or you could play the "inferior" choice that would lead to a boringly draw-ish position. The question: which do you choose?

I would argue that the "correct" choice ultimately depends on many factors, one of which is your opponent's rating (another is your current standing in a given tournament, and what result you're trying to go for). If your opponent is 100+ points higher rated then you, then I would give serious consideration to the "boring draw" option. But if he's 200+ points below you, I would consider the "ambitious tactical" option to be more correct.

Also, it would appear as though people are misunderstanding what I meant by "tricky/offbeat opening move/line". I'm not talking about opening traps so much, most of which just leave you with a clearly worse position once your opponent successfully defends against whatever obvious threats. I'm talking more about less familiar opening lines/systems in general, many of which may not be theoretically best, but can still be a potent weapon against the uninitiated.

Also, @ MetalRatel, I agree with your statement about rising juniors and their tendency to make some dubious positional judgments.

You have the complex tactics/boring draw idea the wrong way round. Against a stronger opponent go for complications.

Congrats on a great result!

Really cool thread. Definitely worth a read along with the analysis done in the comments. Well played in your games