Coming Out of My Cave and Secret Dark Knights U1800 Champs at MOTCF 2024

I've gone dark the last three months as I've amped up my training. Adding just an extra 15 minutes to my daily minimum, six days a week, doesn't sound like much, but it adds up. Basically an hour and a half per week of additional training, above and beyond what I used to put in, focused still mostly on game analysis and Polgár mates. I've put my "accountability tracking" screenshots at the bottom of this post. And add to that my partial solution to late-round blundering—ramping up my daily physical training by about double that amount to focus on stamina and endurance—and well, that doesn't leave a lot of time for blogging. 

But today is a post-tournament rest-day, so no excuse not to post! 

The big news is that the Secret Dark Knight Society won the first U1800 prize at the Midwest Open Team Chess Festival (MOTCF) again this year, this time taking sole first (last year we shared it). This is actually SDKS's third straight U1800 first prize, as I understand it, though I was not part of the team for the first of those three years, just the last two. We came in just under the "weight limit" for U1800 with a team average rating of 1783.

The Happy Few: L-R, me, Eric, Scott, Davis, and Josh (Team Captain)

The field was super top-heavy, with a total of eighteen USCF NMs by my count in a field of seventy-five players – practically a quarter (24%) of the field. Which is pretty amazing when you consider that only about 1% of USCF players are NMs. So, a very strong set of teams. This actually may have helped us a bit in the end, since there was a smaller-than-usual contingent of non-master/non-powerhouse teams such as ours.

I was fairly happy with my performance, coming away with a score of 3/4 and a rating bump from 1811 going in to 1824 coming out. This felt kind of good after a bit of a rating slip from 1843 to 1811 over my last few events. 

My one loss came at the hands of a young man rated 2026. So that could have been worse, and I should get some good learning material out of it. Two of my wins were against substantially lower-rated players, but my best game of the tournament came on board three against a 1930 in our crucial third-round match-up against a higher-rated team; my board-one teammate Davis also scored a super clutch win that round. That drawn match (2-2) vs. the higher-rated Karpov Diem team (average rating 1934) was the half-point advantage that put us ahead of the other U1800 teams in the end.

Here is my game with a few preliminary thoughts. I blundered my e-pawn right out of the opening on move eleven (blech!), but I aimed for compensation in the form of piece activity for myself and persistent restraint of my opponent's pieces by dominating the d-file and the a1-h8 diagonal. 

EDIT (3/19): This just in -- the pgn of Davis's key win from round three, which I just got hold of! In particular, 19. d6! is a pretty great move.

To sign off, for the masochists and insomniacs among you, here is my training accountability for the past three months...