After 3 months of not playing any OTB it can probably be expected that my performance would not be incredible, which ended up being correct. However on some good news I did manage to hit 2500 blitz on chess.com before 2025 ended, but online and OTB both have been in a bit of a slump.
I did a reasonable amount of prep for this tournament, mainly having to do with playing 1. d4, so lets see how it went.
Round 1: A Shaky Start
Yeah wow, just made a full blunder for no reason. Im glad I won but it doesnt feel very deserved, especially against a 1600. I had an ok sense of confidence at this point but my next opponent would definitely grind that into the ground
Round 2: Send hopes and prayers
Chess might be the only game where facing a child in it is actually even scarier. Now make that child a WFM who is a previous world champion who has cooked me before, and yeah... not a good recipe for success we have here.
I wont comment more than I feel I have to, just a good game to show how rough my focus or form was on day 1 of the tournament. I feel I would have played e5 in any other situation but oh well, 1/2 going into round 3. Surely there was no way this tournament could go worse, right?
Round 3: It got worse
Ending day 1 with a score of 1/3 and being down 15 rating was not exactly what I had envisioned, however there is always day 2 with a fresh mindset and new opponents.
Let the lock in begin
Round 4: 17 move checkmate?
Now before I get into the actual round, I would like to add that me and my opponent are friends. And while they did ask for me to not show the game, it was my one pretty game in a bad tournament, soooooooo ill just keep names out
Winning in a fashion such as that would suggest that im back in good form, which seemed to be true for day 2 of this tournament. All in all my opponent just didnt know the opening very well and fell into a nice combination. 2/4 going into the final round meant that there was a chance I could salvage the tournament. All I would need is a nice easy pairing.
Round 5: 2200 NM
To be honest this draw was the game I was most proud of, even though late into the endgame I made an error, it was hard to punish and we both had 93% accuracies over 60 moves.
A far better day 2 for sure, but still all in all an underwhelming tournament, I lost 6 rating points and will likely be competing more soon
Regardless, the countdown to state begins
