2017 - Is this the year? :) (Part 1 out of 2)

Hi there,

It has been a while since my last blog-post here on chess.com, which doesn't mean I have given up on my chess journey, in fact, quite the opposite. We are almost 2,5 months in the year 2017 and so much have happened!

As some of you already know, I have been actively involved in the PRO Chess League together with our awesome Latvian team Riga Magicians. We had our ups and downs during the season, and, unfortunately for us the competition ended in the very dramatic first round of play-offs (Live stream from this match here).  

Besides the PRO Chess League, I have played 1 tournament with classical time control and a couple of rapid & blitz tournaments with various results - so all in all rather eventful beginning of the year in terms of chess for me.  

The first tournament in 2017 for me was Skane Blitz Championship held in Lund, Sweden. Skane region besides others includes Copenhagen, Helsingor in Denmark & Malmo, Lund, Helsingborg in Sweden. I must admit that I didn't play good chess there, several hopeless games saved by the bell. So I was lucky to finish second (see tournament table below).

Next tournament I played was Bronshoj Lang Weekend, which was played here in Copenhagen. This was a much more serious tournament as the time control was 1,5h for the first 40 moves with +30 second increment from move 1 and then addition 15 minutes after move 40.

I started as No. 4 seed by rating, so the only goal in the tournament was to win it! 

Round 1

Round 4

In this round I was paired against the young and talented FM Mikkel Manosri Jacobsen. I played against him back in December 2016, where after a very tough game, where I was defending the whole time, MIkkel blundered and I managed to win the game. So one thing was certain / this is going to be a tough one!

Things were looking pretty good at this point as it was me and another guy sharing the first place. I was also rather happy about my play as the game quality seemed to be much better in comparison with the last blitz tournament I played in Lund.

The second half of this review coming soon in a separate blog post, stay tuned! 

Cheers,

Ritvars