Winning the Most Draining Chess Tournament

Saddeningly, this summer was going to mark the one-year anniversary of the last time I played in an OTB tournament. I’d been playing a lot of online games in that timeframe, so it made sense to make a return to OTB. Here’s how that conversation went between me and my brain:

“Get back into OTB classical! It’ll be fun!”

Alright. Which tournament should I sign up for?

”Sign up for the tournament that has four rounds of classical in one day for no reason at all!”

Uh, won’t that be quite mentally exhausting?

”Nah, you’ll be fine!”

(No. I was not fine.)

Anyway, I signed up for the four-rounds-in-one-day misery. My logic was that I’d spend Saturday at the tournament and have Sunday to myself. That Sunday was the day of my birthday as well. So without further ado, I engaged in some preparation for a few weeks.

The Preparation

I spent the few weeks I had prior to the tournament working on my chess.

I worked through many tactical puzzles. In fact, the very first (chess-related) thing I did after the tournament registration was working through this tactics course. I skipped the first two chapters and completed the rest in about half an hour. The puzzles are well-selected and I found it very helpful for my much-needed sharpening of pattern recognition.

Another thing I did was setting up some calculation exercises on a real board. Most of the chess games I play are on a 2D board. Those who’ve made the shift from peering at a screen to pushing wood know that 2D board vision doesn’t fully carry over to 3D, and vice versa. The above exercise is useful and I’d recommend it to anyone with the same predicament as me.

I took the time to reread the couple of chess books I own (and love!). Silman's Reassess Your Chess was my guidebook to strategy and Silman's Endgame Course was my guidebook to endgames. Yes, Jeremy Silman's my favourite chess author, how'd you know?

Of course, I had to supplement the actually useful preparation by bogging down my mind with opening worries. Recently I wrote a blog post about Chessable Short and Sweets. I used some of them to help me out. Here are the courses I took ideas from:

• GermanMC's Ruy Lopez - I denounced GermanMC's courses in the above blog but we really aren't spoilt for choice when it comes to Ruy Lopez courses. I went through his lines and made up my own explanations for each move.
• Saric's Open Sicilian - All e4 repertoire should focus just as much on the Sicilian as e5. That's where Saric comes in. He chooses ambitious and fun mainlines and his video is very good.
• Two Knights - I used the (completely and utterly insane) Polerio lines in this course.
• Anton's e5 - I love this course and used its lines against the Italian and Ruy Lopez.
• Ganguly's Nimzo-Indian - Logical, strong lines with amazing explanations. Ganguly writes whole paragraphs of useful annotations for each move. While this is the course whose lines I deviate from the most (he has a 27 move line with a queen sacrifice which ends in forced mate), I still like it and would recommend it for a Nimzo player.
• Sielecki/Barrish's Ragozin - If you pair up the Nimzo with the Ragozin, Sielecki and Barrish have paired up to help you out. They aim for the fastest route to equality so you can fight White on equal footing. Sielecki is a popular chess YouTuber (you might know him as Chessexplained) and perhaps that helps his video be great.

This repertoire focuses on ambition with White. We play openings like the Ruy Lopez that press for the advantage. As Black, this repertoire is very solid. We attain equality quickly in all lines with the Open Spanish and Nimzo-Ragozin.

The other opening I wanted to learn (how to counter) was the ever-popular and ever-annoying London System. There are many good responses to the London, and I was confused as to what to choose. A friend recommended me an eccentric line with lots of knight moves, and so that's what I planned to play. I’m honestly not sure of its quality, but I do trust that friend’s opening advice. Here’s the line if you’re curious:

With extensive opening brainrot under my belt, I went to the tournament feeling... still nervous about openings for no apparent reason. Anyway, let's get into the real meat of the recap, the games.

Round One

In my first round I was paired with an unrated player. These guys are usually either casual players who want to try out classical chess or chess Gods who will ruthlessly melt you at the board. My opponent did not show up at the start of the round, so I played my move and let his clock run. He arrived at last after 50 minutes, not long before the forfeit time. He sat down, shook my hand, and this is the game we played...

Not a bad start to the tournament. While it didn't help me on my ultimate goal to raise my elo, it did give me some experience and a boost in morale. After the tournament my opponent got a provisional rating of 800, and I think that is around his playing strength.

As my opponent got into a worse position quite quickly, I didn't learn much from this game, except that my devious Anti-Berlin prep could be worth expanding on.

Round Two

After a brief break of thirty minutes, the chess play resumed. In Round Two, I was sitting on the other side of the board, using the Black pieces. My opponent was an old man wearing a Hawaiian shirt, and he had a 1500 rating. Oddly, he kept nodding off mid-game. He’d make a move and shut both his eyes until he heard the tap of the clock indicating my response. I can only assume he'd not gotten much sleep last night, maybe from some last-minute chess preparation.

Going into this game, I was ready for anything he was going to throw at me. After all, I had prepared for both e4 and d4. To my surprise, my opponent didn't play either...

That was an interesting game. My risky queen infiltration paid off as I found a nice tactic to pick up a pawn. From there I had to put my weak endgame technique to work. Luckily, I converted without any major bumps in the road. 

Here are my main takeaways from that game:

• I got quite scared when my opponent played his knight to e5. I didn't really know how to deal with it, though I somewhat figured it out in the end. I didn't even want to castle for the first ten moves, though it was the best move, because then he'd obviously launch a devastating attack and deliver checkmate somehow.
• I allowed my opponent a lot of counterplay in the pawn-up endgame, specifically allowing him to play the freeing move 25. d5. I should've focused on what he was doing more than what I wanted to do. If I did I would've chosen the blockading 24...Nf6 instead, which was by far the better move.

Round Three

Between rounds two and three we had a lunch break and mine was quite short. This was because I'd just played a long endgame and also because the tournament organizers crammed four rounds into one day. I ran to the closest restaurant available, Dairy Queen, to eat a fast food cheeseburger - the lunch of champions. The cholesterol must've short-circuited my brain because I played terribly.

That was a complete blunderfest! Both of us had many chances to win the game, and we managed to expertly avoid them all to steer the game into a draw. Every defeat (and I know this technically wasn't one) has the silver lining of growth opportunities, so here's a few of my opportunities:

• I'm not blaming the opening at all for what happened in the game, but I want to learn a more aggressive variation against the Najdorf. I have the English Attack in mind.
• At various points I was depressed with my position and was blind to the many obvious opportunities I had to claw my way back into the game.
• I missed many of my opponent's ideas. I just wasn't looking for them. It's something I'll have to consciously imbue into my thought process.
• I played toothless moves with the intention of getting a draw while I was a pawn up in the endgame. Honestly I just wanted that dreadful game to end and I'd take the half point to make it happen.

Round Four

After my atrocious Round 3 game I returned to the board with a strong determination to be a little less stupid in my final game. Before my round I googled my opponent and was shocked to find his online chess profile. He had a nine-year-old account and a 2000 rapid rating. I noticed he was a 1. d4 player with an odd tendency to always throw in the move e3 blocking in his dark squared bishop. I don't think I found a single game where he entered a mainline. In the end this information was of absolutely no help except for making me feel like Sherlock Holmes as he pushed his pawn to e3 during our game.

Not bad. That win gave me some more elo and a tournament score of 3.5/4. I spoke with my opponent briefly after the game; he was a great guy. After spectating some other games and looking at the results of completed games, I saw that I was tied for first place with one other participant. Here are my takeaways from the final game:

• I wrote about this in my Round 2 list takeaways as well, but I need to stop being so unnecessarily scared by the slightest hint of a kingside attack.
• Playing 26...Ra8? instead of the obvious 26...Nxb4 was a terrible tactical oversight.

My Performance

Overall I'm pretty happy with how I played. I noticed some improvements in my play compared to my last tournament. The biggest difference I saw was my improvement in board vision. I was able to actually look at a physical chessboard and see what was going on. I have to credit this to the board vision drill I described in the Preparation section earlier. 

Another aspect I improved on was time management. In previous tournaments I blitzed out moves that I thought were obvious and made many blunders because of it. In this tournament I sat on my hands (literally!) and thought deeply at every turn. The weird hand-sitting psychological trick actually helped a lot.

My lack of chessic stamina could've led to my downfall if not for a few lucky opponent errors. After having played two long games and concentrating for many hours, I just found myself unable to fully focus for the last two. I'm sure this is a skill which will come with tournament experience. I just don't have much of that yet.

The third round specifically brought some errors in my chess thinking to light and I'm grateful for it. I honestly barely even noticed that my opponent blundered and I was completely winning because a short while ago I was completely losing and I couldn't adjust my mindset from 'swindle' to 'convert'. As a result I was unable to snap out of it and objectively evaluate the position. Instead I just steered the game into a draw for absolutely no reason.

Tournament Result

I ended up scoring 3.5/4 which gave me joint first place in my section. The tiebreakers were based on performance rating, and I'd apparently played stronger opponents than the other 3.5er, so I won the $250 prize for first place and also got a trophy. Not bad. My main goal, of course, was to raise my elo and I think I accomplished it. I rose from 1300 to 1450 national rating - very good for having played only three rated games. 

Conclusion

Across the four rounds, I had played ten hours of classical chess. That’s well over nine hours of classical chess. That’s almost eleven hours of classical chess. Of course, I was exhausted after it all. I returned home at 11pm, ate dinner hastily, and collapsed on my bed.

I hope I'll soon find another tournament to play in. When it does, I'll have to make another recap blog. 'Til then, thanks for reading, see you next time!