What's New? What's Next? (2025 Remaster)
Since I began my National Open series, the sands of time have ravaged society, heroes have become legends, monuments have been forgotten, and dust has coated empires that believed themselves immortal. So I thought it would be prudent to catch you up on what I have been doing for the past 2 years, primarily in terms of my tournament progress (but also some blogging shenanigans), so that when I do my next OTB recap, you aren’t given whiplash by the time and rating difference.
What's New?
2023:
The month after I competed in National Open, I competed in a Northern California tournament that I compete in annually, and had my best result ever for that tournament, going 4.5/6 and winning 375 dollars, which we spent on the gas to get home.
My favorite game from this tournament was this cool clash with Shan Lee, who used to be active in BlogChamps and some other clubs I was in, and I last saw him on the @LegalizeCaruana13 account, which got banned recently. I saw him recently and he thinks because he took a break and only played on l*chess, he got flagged when he came back for his drastic gains. Free my boy Shan, he did nothing wrong.
After this tournament, my rating went up from 1574 to 1614, and I didn’t stop there; over the next few months I went on one of my best stretches of chess ever. I competed in 3 local tournaments, and went 3.5/4, 3/3, and 1.5/2, gaining a total of 90 points.
So as of December 2023, life was pretty good. I had finally posted part 2 of my National Open blog, my rating was at a peak of 1704, and I was excited for a 2024 filled with chess and a blogging resurgence. I was even planning a sequel to my hit 2023 blog recounting my top ten games of 2022, but this time I was going to cover my top 10 swindles of 2023. (Mainly because I didn’t have 10 games in 2023 that I thought were truly great.) Simply put, heading into 2024, I had a new peak USCF rating and I was ready to take it to a new level while returning to blogging at the same time!
*
*
2024:
Spoiler alert: It didn’t happen. None of it happened.
I can’t sugarcoat it, junior year was rough for me. My horrific time management and lazy study habits were catching up to me, I was starting to prepare for college applications in the fall, and I still had plenty of extracurriculars, so chess took a backseat. For those of you who remember that era, I took ownership of BlogChamps after National Open in 2023, but just 8 months later, I was just a figurehead and @AstroTheoretical_Physics was doing essentially all of the work. One thing led to another and eventually I was able to hand the club to VOB, who has gone on a generational run since. (But that’s a story for another time.)
As for the swindle blog? Finding swindles is hard man. By the time I found around 5 games it was far past the new year mark; I just couldn’t find the time during break.
Once school started again, I didn’t even have time for OTB chess, so I wasn’t able to compete in a classical tournament until July, but I was cautiously optimistic because I had always done well in this tournament, so surely this trend would hold up, right?
Right?
*
*
Wrong.
I went 2/6 and lost 48 points. I was disappointed, but I wasn’t truly surprised. I went in with practically no prep, and I was at my peak rating while being far from peak form. I mean at that point I could basically have put a “free points” sign next to my board, I was such easy pickings. But I wasn’t going to let this (predictable) setback deter me. I went back to competing in smaller tournaments, crawling my way back to 1674, and in August, I went down to Fresno to compete in the Central California Open. And this time? I was locked in. This time? I was doing puzzles, sharpening my openings, and practicing consistently. I was competing in the U1700 section, and being at the top of my rating group, I could practically taste the prize money.
Well with the tournament being 5 rounds, my aim was 4/5. Of course that wasn’t gonna happen, right?
Right?
*
*
Central California Craziness
Well, things were going my way again. First, I set the tone with this gorgeous win in round 1:
After round 3, I was undefeated, and I quickly gained a crushing position in round 4, and I had a tactic to win a piece. This is it! I can feel it, I’m going to be rich, I’m going to hit a new peak again! I’m back!
I don’t want to talk about it.
As you can imagine, this loss completely took my head out of the game, and I was unable to recover for round 5, and I was efficiently and thoroughly cooked. And that’s how, in only 2 rounds, I went from having the possibility of winning my entire section, to getting no money and losing 23 rating points.
To make matters even better, I was unable to compete in any tournaments for the next semester because of college applications. Did it kind of suck? Yes. Was it worth it? Well, considering that I was able to get into UC Berkeley (my dream school), absolutely, I regret nothing. (This isn't entirely true, but priorities are priorities.)
But at last, after a year and a half of increasingly hectic school schedules, I was ready for the bounce back. I had my eyes on a tournament in January 2025, a tournament that I had been meaning to compete in for years, and let’s just say that it would end up being more insane than any tournament I covered in this blog. That tournament is of course the [REDACTED] Open in [REDACTED].
What’s Next?
I’ve learned my lesson. If you’re seeing this blog that means that I have at least one future full-length blog completely written, and one or two more on the way. I’m planning to pick back up with a blog recapping the [REDACTED] Open, so stay tuned to find out what it is! (Or just look up my USCF profile for those of you that have that information and are lamer than an abused horse.) There is also another blog in the works that I plan to release in that general time span, either directly before or directly after the [REDACTED] blog one that I consider my most ambitious project to date. Please, I’m begging you, take this with a grain of salt, as there is a chance it never materializes. But just in case, watch out for a fire blog from me in early December.
I know I can’t really make up for such an egregious absence, but I’m hoping to take advantage of a relatively light first semester (I saved a lot of my credits for next semester) and start a blogging renaissance. So thank you guys for everything, and I sincerely hope to see you soon.
P.S. Why is this blog called a remaster? Excellent question!
