Finally Class A: 2013 Chicago Open and Update

Jun 17, 2013, 11:02 PM |

Hello All! It's been some time since I last made a blog post on my progress towards my goal of becoming an expert in the next two years. I've almost reached the half-way point (starting out as a 13XX rated player in the Fall of my first year at the University of Chicago) and in about a year and half I've progressed to 1846 USCF. While I am happy with this numerical tag, I am not so satisfied with my conditioning and training as of late. Even with a good result (I hit my goal of +3-0=4 for 5.0/7) in the U1900 of the Chicago Open, I still felt my play was far below my ability as a result of poor physical shape and endurance and a certain measure of laziness at the board. I will be working hard at chess this summer to try to maintain a strong level of play and to learn as much as I can in the few months ahead of me. I will now share with you a few of my more memorable games from the recently concluded Chicago Open.

This is my first round game. Though I won this game, I was not satisfied with the opening position and found it uncomfortable to play. This is the motivation for my picking up another weapon in the Ruy or Scotch Game against 1...e5.

Sadly, I drew the next four rounds (blowing two very promising positions and saving a couple of positions that were very close to lost in the process), which eliminated my chances of taking home any significant prize money. Still, I knew I needed to sweep the final two rounds to have a respectable score so I played aggressively in the final two rounds. The following game is I think my second tournament win from the black side of the Caro Kann (I've only lost with it once and have many draws).

This is my final round game where I finally played an opening that wasn't either the Scotch or the Caro (which I had seen a combined 5/6 times already this tournament). It was a French! This made me happy because I had been prepping French theory the week prior to this tournament, and I was glad I'd be able to finally test out the lines I had worked hard on to understand. Though I committed a grave error in this game, my opponent returned the favor and I had a spectacular opening edge that I went on to convert.

Thank you for reading this blog. I will hope to keep track of my progress over the summer with more updates in the near future. Best of luck to everyone with their chess goals!

Finally Class A: 2013 Chicago Open and Update

Road to 2200