USCF Rapid Tournament Review - April 24, 2020
USCF U1450 Rapid Tournament – April 24, 2020
What an absolute awful night of chess this turned out. I have been wanting to play in the Chess.com’s USCF Rapid tournament for some time but have found it difficult considering it’s Friday night and I have a family, but tonight I was able to finally play.
…and what a train wreck that was.
I feel like I keep working on my Endgame, yet when it comes time to put my practice into play, I fall apart (see match 5). In all honestly, I thought I was primed tonight to get at least 2.5/5 and felt even better after sitting at 1.5 after 2 matches, but then things absolutely went down.
I did learn some lessons tonight…mainly that I need to continue to focus on all 3 aspects of the game, partially tactics and my endgame. I need to advance my opening theory, as I know that I play the same moves repeatedly without knowing if they are the best moves.
GAME 1
Great start to the tournament, and I felt like my play was fairly strong.
GAME 2
Stockfish shows that I made a lot of errors in the endgame, but I wasn’t sure what else I would have done, and having been a Rook down for so long, having it end in a draw it actually a good result for me.
GAME 3
Resigned, as I knew that I had no where to go. I had nowhere to go with my f5 Bishop, and so a simple pawn push to e4 for him and I would have been even more in the hole.
GAME 4
This one stung as I just felt like I was overplayed on tactics that I should have seen coming and been able to protect myself against. This one absolutely stung.
GAME 5
Final match, which was a match between me being upset over my 2 previous games, and trying to focus on hitting my goal of 2.5. I might not have been able to blunder this game away any worse, especially after he gifted me this Knight, and left me his Rook for the taking.
So, that's a wrap on this Rapid tournament. Certainly some things that I need to learn from these 5 matches, however making the same mistakes over and over again is becoming very frustrating.
I will certainly be looking over these games again to make sure that I get as many lessons as possible from this. I think the game that will stick with me is the 5th game and my debacle of an endgame.
