Path To Chess Prosperity #19 PART 1: How I Beat A FIDE Master

I know you guys are anxious.

You either already know (from all of the posting I did last weekend), or you got spoiled by the title of this blog, and yes, I'm sorry that I gave it away this early!

Last weekend, I participated in the 2018 North/Central Texas Scholastic Championships. The event is seven rounds, and if you win the tournament, you are crowned 2018 Texas Scholastic Champion. I was seeded roughly #26 out of 95 players going into the event, so I knew my chances of winning were not great, however, I was pretty much (surprisingly!) in winning contention for most of the tournament.

In round 1, I had to clean up against an 1100 player, which was not all that hard, though round 2 put me to the test against a strong master on board 1 (with Black!). Last year, I was knocked out early by another Fide Master in round 1, and it seemed like that would happen again. I was simply excited for this opportunity to play a titled player in a competitive environment.

According to a source, the odds of me winning this game were about 4%. The odds that your favorite sport is golf? About the same...

Let's dive into the game! (NOTE: credit goes to Jason Howell (local club member, rated around 1900) who was kind enough to go over my game and provide notes. I used some of those for this game):

I hope you enjoyed the game and annotations! I ended up losing my third round game to an expert. Out of humility, I will display the game... but, out of pride, I will not include notes or annotations (though I plan to go through the game anyways! ). Simply put, I was losing an exchange on move 16... only to "defend" until move 64!