Give a Mistake, Get a Mistake (PCC G|60)
On Saturday, my friend Elias and I headed over to SW Portland to play in the Portland Chess Club's monthy G|60 tournament. Overall, I had an all right tournament; I scored 2 points out of 4, and had a much more relaxed frame of mind throughout. Still, my start was rough, and I missed some great opportunities to really take my game up a level.
My first game was against a French Defense. I realised later that, as versed in the lines as Black as I am, I'm not super strong as white. In any case, it went into a Winawer, and I got a great, probably winning position when black broke the pawn tension. However, I was too hasty, and missed a tactic that broke my center and lead to my demise. The fact that the game went for 62 moves was only due to the fact that I spent the last 45 moves trying to swindle my way out.
My second game (and my only game with the black pieces) I faced some weird 1.b3 nonsense which I didn't handle perfectly. I was worse, but by no means losing. Then, on move 13, he attacked my queen. My candidate moves were all queen moves, and I spent three minutes thinking about them all--then moved my knight instead. What is really frustrating is that when we played a friendly while waiting for the round to finish, I blew him off the board.
