Thoughts on the March Magnus.

  This was a fun day.   There were four sections, U-1000, U-1400, U-1800, and Open.  I had originally planned to play U-1000,  but checking over the registration material saw that it was set up for scholastic players - shorter time control, asap pairings and rounds - and so opted to play U-1400 instead.   

   I finished 0-0-0-1 again,  making my point in the last round.  I'm happy about the result - one point was my goal for this tournament when I thought I would be playing U-1000,  so to make it playing a section up is really satisfying.  

     It was also neat to realize that one of the players in Open was a guy I'd played against back in my scholastic days, back when I was playing chess because I had crush on the captain of the chess team.

      Over all,  I think I played more competently than I did in my last tournament.  I'm still working on remembering to check CCTs  every move,   but I made fewer outright blunders.   My notation was also better - only a few minor mistakes and nothing that interfered with being able to replay the games and put them on the pc.

     I also had the opportunity to meet Boyd Reed, our local FIDE arbiter and general nice guy.   He's running a write in campaign for an at large seat on the USCF board (election in 2015 to take the seat in 2018),  and gave a brief speech about why we should elect him.  He then went on to win the tournament with 4.0/4.0, and presumptively pick up the norm he needed to move from CM to NM.   That'll have to wait until the next ratings publication to be solid.

     Oh, and a nice point - we got free pizza and sodas!