Turning a Tournament Around (US Open day 2)
Turning a Tournament Around (US Open day 2)
Previous: Starting the Trail to GM (US Open Day 1)
So I was a little dissapointed after the round 1 loss where I missed any crucial things, although I felt overall my play was pretty good. I needed to slow down a little and I should do fine. I feel my real strength is 1900ish (I don't play in many tournaments and was recently having a tough streak of losses so I'm quite under-rated at the moment) so I thought this would be a close game.
At this point I got upset. I was definitely better, and then I made a mistake. It was no brilliancy of my opponent, I made a bad move. In both cases (Nh4 & Bxc3) I saw the moves, as I put them in a different order in my calculations but I just skipped entire variations... I don't want this to be the tournament where I play very well for the first 30 moves and then blunder in the last 5 because I'm "tired" or because I'm not managing my time well. I didn't come all the way to the US Open to "almost-win".
After some helpful encouragement from Kayden Troff, I promised that I wouldn't lose any more games (mirroring Sam Shankland's promise and we joked that i was just purposefully copying him by losing the first two and was going to win the US Open). So I went to Round 3 with a deadly determination - I was going to crush my opponent (who happened to be the lowest rated player in the field).
Well, that was not what I was expecting. My first two games were much better, while I played terribly this game and managed a win? Well I'm not going to complain too loudly... Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to combine winning with good games.
