Washington Open Chess 2015

Hello friends. So I recently played the annual Washington Open chess tournament, and after seeing flipextremee write about his amazing tournament, I decided to do the same... my tournament did not go as well as pratik's did, but it was fun overall and i played some good games. So this was my first tournament in a while and i haven't been too serious about studying chess these days. I planned on focusing on preparing a week before the tournament, but i ended up doing nothin... ok here are the summary/games. some error while writing this.. games for rounds 1 and 2 are switched.

so round 1 i played nikolay bulakh as black. i played the sicilian kan, and he played the maroczy bind set-up. its a really effective set-up for white if he plays it accurately, but he made some positional errors, starting with letting me double his c pawns. then i saw some combination which gave me rook vs bishop, and i slowly managed to win in the endgame. my bro Sam messed up in his French (I always tell him to give up on the french, but he doesn't listen) and ended up dead lost. not a good start for him...

so then in round 2, sam and i SWITCHED opponents! i got to play sam's round 1 opp (michael hosford) and sam played nikolay with colors switched. i played the english, and he played e5 + f5 set-up. i actually recently beat him with the same opening, so i decided to follow that game. after some middle-game play, i ended up a pawn up in a R+B+pawns vs R+B+pawns endgame. the endgame was tricky, but i eventually found a creative win. here's the game. sam won a quick game this round, that's good to hear..

so then in round 3, i got paired as black against tanraj sohal. it was not a very good game. he maybe had a small advantage out of the opening, and he gave me no chance. eventually, he closed the center, and started opening up lines to my king. i had some chances to trade off pieces in the middlegame, but still would have been a tough position to defend against. good game.. here it is below..

in round 4, i played yogi saputra. i decided to try out 1. e4. he played e5. i haven't studied this opening much, and i forgot most of the main lines. i thought about playing the Ponziani, but i eventually went for Ruy Lopez stuff with d3. i ended up in a passive position from the opening after some unclear play, but we traded off into an endgame where i had rook and pawn vs his bishop and knight. i opened up the position, got my rooks active, and his pieces got all tangled up and he resigned, soon to be losing a piece.

then in round 5, i was paired as black against Joshua Doknjas. i expected to be paired against pratik padhi, who was having a good tournament and also had 3/4, but no. so back to the game, joshua played the alapin sicilian, and i played a drawish defense. Probably should've played something more open and agressive.

in round 6, I played Pratik Padhi as white. I won material early in the game from a "trap".

Thanks for reading!