Hello all! This blog is about my first OTB tournament ever. I've been playing on chess.com for many years and now I have gone to my first OTB match! I wasn't sure how I'd preform but I think I exceeded expectations and played a pretty nice tournament.
Without further adieu, here are the games!
The time control was 90/30 and there would be 5 rounds. My first time playing this time control.
My first game was against an 1741 older veteran. We ended up taking more then 3 hours to finish the game and then we had to jump into next round right after!
This was a nice learning game for me. I played insecure and passively because I had the mindset that my opponent knew what he was doing and wouldn't blunder. I missed a really easy tactic because of that mindset. My time management was nice, but I moved too fast in the endgame, a habit which would come to haunt me in a later game.
In the 2nd game, I played a 1709. Since my last game took so long, I had only a short break before I had to jump into the next round.
Afterwards my opponent said he totally brainfarted when he gave the exchange. I need to work on my pawn breaks, I had the advantage but I didn't know when or which pawns to push. Instead I just moved my other pieces and waited for him to blunder.
In round 3 I played a 1590 who was around my age. We played a Sicilian and I won after he blundered in a slightly even endgame.
I got too excited when I was winning and gave away my big advantage. I moved too fast and wasn't thinking enough. I got lucky to win that game, my opponent totally had a draw, I can believe I blew that big advantage.
My fourth game, I was black against the guy who runs the local chess club. I don't think I've even beaten him before in our friendly chess games, so I'm pretty happy to win this game
I knew he likes to play offbeat openings but I was still surprised he played it OTB. He had an advantage at one point but gave it away after pushing his pawns in front of his king, I then won a pawn and white made it easier for me to win by offering to trade pieces.
I was now 3.5/4 and for the final round I had to play the only other player who was also 3.5/4. He was over 2200 rated and had beaten an FM the round before. I wasn't expecting to win the game but I was gonna play my best chess. He responded with c6 and we played a rather boring Caro-Kann Defense: Classical Variation that was drawn throughout.
With this draw I was tied for first at 4/5 with my opponent. An FM won his game to tie with us and a different game with a player at 3/4 was drawn after I think 4 hours!
In the end, I got into a 3-way tie for first!! I wasn't expecting to do that good since there was many high rated players in the tournament but because of being the lowest rated player and the draw in the first round, I got easier pairings and didn't play anyone over 1800 until my last round.
Because of tiebreaks, I got 3rd place but I'm very happy with my result. Being in a shared 1st place with 2 titled (I think) players is pretty sweet! The tournament hasn't been rated but I think I'm predicted to become rated around 2000 CFC.
Thank you for reading. Follow for more blogs and (hopefully) see my improvement! Hopefully I'll be playing more OTB events in the future.
