Tarrasch Tournament 

Duckfest Digest 21

This is a quick report on the Tarrasch Tournament we played in the Bookworms Club. Five players with roughly similar ratings between 1450 and 1550.

The Tarrasch was already on my list to investigate so this was a welcome opportunity to explore the opening. I’m only interested to play this opening with black but it’s maybe equally relevant to play the opposite side as well.

For those unfamiliar, the Tarrasch is a variation of the Queen’s Gambit Declined. All games started in the following position with white to move.

Final standings

I’m proud to announce I managed to win the tournament, because I had to work hard for it. 

Highlights: My Quickest Win

In this game I played the Marshall Gambit as I did two other times as well. According to the tournament PGN in the opening tree I was the only one playing that line.

Highlights: Beautiful Mate

My first attempt at the Schara Gambit. Not an easy game but I liked my tactical attacking opportunities. I was doing okay, but was not sure how to finish the game. Until a plan formed in my head that worked beautifully.

Highlights: My Only Loss

A game against my nemesis Kevin the Unbreakable. 

Part 2 Tournament Snapshots

This tournament is a good setting to share one of my training practices that I use to improve, but I mainly do it because it’s fun.

Essentially, every couple of days I take a snapshot of all games in progress to see how well I’m doing compared to the other players. It looks like this.

Basically what I’m doing here is estimate the outcomes of all games in progress. For example, as you can see on the first row in the table you see that in my game vs Czternascie (the one I shared earlier in this article) where I’m playing with black my estimation on move 30 is that I’m 70% likely to win. And I make a quick note of my reasoning. I do this for all 4 games in progress and combined I expect to get 2.4 points out of my current games. Two games have yet to start, both expected to yield 0.5 points. The two games I already finished gave me 2 points. All in all I expected to end up with 5.4 points in total. I do the same for my opponents to see how I'm doing.

Doing this has two advantages while the tournament is in progress

• I get a feeling for the positions that arise (specifically because all players play the same opening)
• I learn a little bit about my competitors and their playing style

After the tournament I can look back at the positions with the help of Stockfish and evaluate how well I understood the position. Regarding my own games:

Against Czternascie I gave myself a 70% chance to win. That was way off, as the position was already +5 to +6. In my game vs Kevin I gave myself 60% chance to win on move 20, which was wrong as the engine showed white was better by 90 to 100 centipawn (+0.91). Against Mercer the position was equal on move 20 but I think 60% chance to win was fairly accurate.

There is one position I’d like to zoom in on, regarding my game vs vivekrv59. On move 30, I thought the position was equal but according to the engine I was behind (+1.57). 

White to move. What would you think of the position?