2200! - My best tournament performance

Chess is probably one of the most individualistic games out there. In a game of chess, it's you on one side, and your opponent on the other. What you do and the moves you play are a result of your thoughts and only yours, and whatever result emerges from the game, win, draw or loss, is solely your responsibility. This is why I find chess played in teams particularly interesting. I find that having multiple people go against each other at a time reduces the predictability of the result of a match based on the rating of the players and makes for an engaging form of cooperative chess (or at least as cooperative as chess can be). 

I, along with three of my classmates, was able to participate in the team chess state-championship in Puebla, Mexico on the 24th and 25th of May in the high school/under-18 section. My team ended in fifth place after five rounds of play with two match wins, two draws and a loss. However, besides the fun experience of sharing a tournament with my classmates, I was able to achieve my greatest performance in classical chess to date, ending as the best player in the event with five out of five wins on board one and a 2271 performance rating according to the chess-results website. 

Sadly, I am yet unrated in classical chess

And so, in honor of my unexpected performance, I will analyze my two best and most instructive games of the event, with the black pieces in round 1 and with the white pieces in round 5.

In the first round with the black pieces I played a French defense and my opponent entered an exchange variation. In these lines I typically opt for a setup with Be3, Ne7, Bf5, c6, Qc7 and Nd7, and whenever possible I like to castle queenside and attack my opponent on the kingside. In this game, he castled queenside first, so I ended up castling short instead. Ultimately, I was able to win because my opponent did not start an attack on my king quickly enough and I landed a fork tactic on move 24.

In the last round, I was able to outplay my opponent in the opening in a line I had previously studied and which I knew well in the Alapin Sicilian defense with white, and he ended up having to sacrifice an exchange in order to stay in the game. In the middlegame I was able to simplify the position and later convert the endgame.

Boards 1-4

Overall, I am very happy with what I was able to do in this tournament even if my team didn't finish in first place, and I look forward to participating in more events similar to this one in the future. If anyone else has had an experience with an event similar to this one, they are more than welcome to share, and I would like to wish everyone an excellent day.