My worst tournament ever.

What defines our success?

Is it our circumstances? Or what we put in? Well, I asked myself that weekend at the Rochester Open in the u1900 section. And it turns out for me to succeed I would need to be good at chess, however, thats a rare occurrence around these parts

Round 1: A shaky start

Round 2: A positional squeeze

To say I was in shock would be an understatement not often I get into time scrambles and get lucky, but hey I was very pleased with my semi control over most of the game. Its interesting because I know I have the capacity to play at 1850-1900 elo levels and I do in some games, but I get in my own head a lot and f&#* up, so here seeing bits and pieces of that strength before I return to normal monkey brain me is refreshing. 1.5/2

Round 3: I want to scream and cry

Hey Owen by chance did you happen to blunder being winning the whole game? Yup!

Were you up an exchange and clear positional play? YUP!

Did you throw that all away in 5 seconds? YEPPPPP!

1.5/3 This sucks, but hey he went on to win the whole thing so congrats to my new friend Fox. But that night in the hotel I could barely think past the disappointment in myself and feeling like I failed. 

Round 4: The tilt is here.

"What is tilting in chess you may ask? Well, its feelings of frustration from losing that leads to worse and worse play, a spiral if you will." -Sun Tzu, the art of war

Hubris, Hubris and fear lost the game. 1.5/4

Final Round: oh crap he is good

I heard before the tournament that my opponent Soren is very very strong, he is simply at a low point and having a bad tournament. But even I didnt expect to be worse by move 7...