19th Pacific Coast Open

Hello everyone,

I would like to share some of my games from the recent Pacific Coast Open tournament in Agoura Hills, CA. Although I only scored 2.5 out of 6 in the U1700 section (A poor result; I expected to do much better) all of the games are interesting and instructive as the games I lost (and the one I drew) where all close and I had good chances to win/draw most of them but threw them away with a mistake or two.

The games are all lightly annotated; I'll just post some comment like what I was thinking when I made a particular move, what it accomplishes, etc. I won't go into deep analysis unless there's some long forcing line that both players missed or something like that. I may also edit and add more analysis later. 

The time control for every game was 40/100 SD/30 d10.

The color that I played in each game is shown on the bottom, from my point of view; if you want to see if from white's side as is the standard feel free to click the button to flip the board. 

Also, feel free to comment on the games, ask questions, give analysis/opinions (especially if you're an A player or higher ), or whatnot! 

Here is my Round 1 game.

A pretty effortless, straight-forward win.

 In Round 2 I had an edge but blundered positionally by opening up the center due to a miscalculation, helping my opponent's pawn structure and piece freedom, and then underestimated the power of his subsequent kingside attack. That followed up by me not defending quite as well as I could have, partially due to time pressure. Oh well.

Round 3

A very good example of what happens when you play passively, waste time and allow your opponent to gain a lot of space.

Updated with the third round; please check back later as I will update it again soon with the last three games!  

--Nick