My Road to Master, Part 5 - First tournament in over 10+ years!

So... yesterday I had a spare evening with absolutely no plans whatsoever. I woke up, had my morning coffee and had a sudden epiphany - a chess club nearby, whose members I knew from the past two summer chess competitions, was hosting a club event featuring a small-sized tournament for their own players. I wanted to visit the club for some time now, and needless to say I immediatly set out to find out if I was able to stop by and watch some games (and perhaps learn a thing or two along the way!). 

After a few short messages with one of their members, I grabbed my bycicle and set out in the evening to stop by. Upon entering the club, I was happily caught off-guard when the chairman of the club signed me up for the rapid rounds! "W-What-... well, okay!" I said with a rather curious smile upon my face. I've not played in a tournament since elementary school, mind you, and I had not prepared in the slightest - I only know how to reach a steady middle game with the Ruy Lopez for White with e4 and barely have any knowledge on the Pirc against e4. "It's all for fun, don't worry." The lovely chap reminded me. So I didn't fret, walked in and prepared to play a few games. 

I was set up for four rounds with a time control of 20 minutes with no increment. The pairings were completely random - no set colour to play with and I could be paired with any of the remaining 13 players, whose strengths varied from (what I believe to be) somewhere between a minimum of 1000 and a maximum of +/- 1700.  So I was somewhere in the middle with a rating of around 1300. And I did well! In four games, I only lost once and managed to reach three draws, thus awarding myself with a score of 1.5 out of 4! The loss was against a far better opponent, while the draws were against various strengthed players. I'll go over two of the games. Sadly, I don't have the exact move orders, so I'll do my best to provide diagrams recollected from memory. 

"Total control, still a draw..."

Quite the game! I'm not sure every move is exactly the same, but the position reached at the end of the diagram is the same. I can hear you rumble in the back of your mind... "Why not play on?!?!". Truth is, I wanted to! I had a good position, I evaluated it correctly, I had active (and dangerous) pieces on the board and his king was ready for slaughter (even after the illegal castling move, mind you!).

The other truth is that my opponent was an elderly man, aged 83, who (and I might exaggerate here, sorry good sir!) held out his brittle hand and looked me in the eye with such a gentle smile and said "Let's conserve our strengths, shall we?". So I smiled back and took the draw, letting my position slip. 

The man was a good sport! In exchange for the draw (and the leftover 20 minutes we had left combined on the clock) he offered his own compliments for my play and his insight on the moves we made. He mentioned his pet line with the push on c4 and c5, but also pointed out that I played the sharp opening correct (he even thought the prophylaxis move a3 was good, even when the engine decided it wasn't the best move!) and that I made a strong decision to try and reach the e6 square with my knight. 

Learning from my opponents

The second game I played was against a far better opponent, skilled with the Sicilian Defense. The game was such a mess on my end, I deserved to lose (even though the guy was friendly and jolly enough to 'allow' me to reach an endgame - he was a piece up but still sacrificed two bishops for five pawns and an exiting endgame!). I should've known better when I tried to employ my pet line 2. b3 against a skilled opponent. 

The third game I played wasn't a great succes either. I played a Pirc against his e4 opening, but soon got into trouble when I ignored development of my pieces and greedily tried to bust out a c7-c5 push too early. He slowly built up pressure against my central pawns, backed by two bishops, patiently positioned his pieces well and ended up busting my position wide open. Strangely enough I reached a draw when I managed to salvage my position (barely!) by getting the rooks off the board and entering a seemingly lost Knight versus pawns endgame. I have a gut feeling he let me draw, since he could've easily butchered me at numerous moments. Instead, he turned the endgame into a 'thinking game', indirectly prompting me to find the best continuation to reach the draw. I'm rather glad he did - instead of utterly crushing me, he was kind enough to actually teach me. What a guy!

"Can't you see? It's a draw!"

The fourth and final game of the evening. I sat down with White and pushed out e4. I was happily surprised to enter a game to my liking when my opponents went for 1... e5. The Ruy Lopez it is! Again, I tried to play calmly and look at what the board was telling me to do. I even went a pawn up at some stage of the game when my opponent forgot about the loose pawn when moving his bishop to an active square. But... alas. However 'good' I played on my end, a draw was reached. I'll do a few diagrams (and a puzzle to start off!) to show what went 'wrong'.

Puzzle: Don't trade... don't trade...

I 'could' have reached this sweet, sweet winning puzzle position if I had more carefully payed attention to my pieces. I kept the tension (and before that, absolute control) on the e-file, but failed to deliver. See the next diagram - it'll probably tell you enough...

Tension along the e-file!

Having blasted the big pieces off the board, I thought I was being smart. Even when my opponent smiled and extended a hand for the draw, I thought I was going to win. I politely declined, stating I was familiar with the nature of the opposite coloured bishop endgame resulting in draws, but I kindly asked if we could continue to play. He nodded at me with a chuckle. "By all means, let's play. I'd be happy to show you why it is a draw!" He even reached for an extra pawn and asked if I wanted to add it onto the field, stating that it did not matter how many pawns White would have. I declined and kept playing. 

Turned out he was right after all. The final position (see below) was reached, and a draw was agreed (and above all, a valuable lesson was learned!). 

"Neither King may enter!"

As you can see, there's no entry for White's King! Black's pawns control the entry points on the board left on a4, c4, e4 and g4. White's Bishop is trapped behind the wall of pawns, not able to escape and left to jump back and forth aimlessly. Black's Bishop, however, can enter the other half of the field when Black's King moves from d5, yet it can't attack any of the pawns because they are on dark squares. Black's King could also enter the other half of the position by d5-c4 or d5-e4, but as long as White's King patrols the c3-d3-e3 squares Black's King can't enter (even Black's Bishop can't change that!). 

Closing remarks

I'll keep it short. I had fun, I only lost once, I had an overall fine performance against players who were strong (or even stronger than me!), I learned tons of new ideas - I had a blast. I might just come back in a month or two when I've learnt more and I'm better prepared! Untill next time folks!