Chess in Vegas! Pt 1

Hello everyone!

As a lot of you probably know I took a nearly 1.5-year hiatus from blogging! But after a long wait, I decided to come back to blogging by covering possibly one of the biggest events I have ever played, the 2023 National Open in Las Vegas, Nevada. Now although this tournament was played in the summer, I still think that this is a good tournament to come back to because it was one of my biggest events ever played and there were some very good games in there and some good learning experiences. I am splitting this tournament into two blog parts because it was a 9 round event. The time control was G90;+30. With all that being said, let's look at the games.

In the first round I was paired vs. Nicolas De La Colina (2304 USCF 2199 FIDE) , a strong player who I had only played in blitz prior to the game, let's jump in!

Tough loss to swallow, but I can't get discouraged because my opponent was rated over 2300 USCF. 

I woke up the next day to see that I was paired vs. Alex Yuxuan Wang (2250 USCF 2054 FIDE), let's dive into the game!

I was feeling very good after that win, I ate some dinner, and waited for the pairings, and I saw that I was playing Alan Finkelstein (2202 USCF 2122 FIDE) Whew, another 2200+ USCF player, Let's jump in!

Wow! That was a nail-biter! So many ups and downs but I managed to make a draw. I woke up round 4 and I was white vs. FM Alvaro Dias Huizer (1850p USCF 2362 FIDE) I found that he played some interesting openings, so I may or may not have been able to use that to my advantage, let's jump in!

A little bit of a dissapointing game on my end, on paper it wasn't a bad result but I knew that I could've done more.

Well that's all for part 1! I'm on 2/4 points, will I continue to score good results vs. my much higher rated and more experienced opposition or will I crack under the pressure? Stay tuned till part 2 to find out!