Whittier Chess Tournament Games
Greetings all!
On December 17, 2017 I officially embarked on my journey to become a decent chess player at longer time controls. I competed in the 1400-1999 USCF section with a time control of 60 minutes with a 5 second delay. These were easily the longest games I have ever played in my life and you can definitely tell from the results that I was unprepared. However, I enjoyed myself and scraped up one win to end the tournament 1-3. I'm not annotating the games here because all of them are filled with blunders, mistakes, and just bad play. However, they are entertaining.
With that information, let's jump into the games!
The first game was against a 1548 and I played my traditional c5 as white, my own bastardized version of the English that usually leads to interesting blitz games. Well, this wasn't blitz and it turned into a two hour grind session..and not the kind that Seeley and Jessica enjoy. It was rough, boring, and tiring. Also, I played so passively until I was already lost. Bummer town, population Papa Rick.
After getting ground down for 2 hours from the last game, I, like any decent amateur player, went on tilt and decided to make the next game sharp....Fishing Pole sharp...
Needless to say, it went about as well as you would expect a garbage trap like the Fishing Pole to go in a long time control. It was definitely a fun game though.
Round three had me paired against a 12 year old girl who could apparently take your scalp if you weren't careful. She gave Kelly a run for his money a few times. She blundered a full piece early but I did my best to blunder right back as you can see in the game. Luckily she missed it. This was another fun game. I did my absolute best to stay away from closed positions because screw that noise. See if you can catch the blunder that would have destroyed my advantage.
By the end of the day I was exhausted and but stoked to actually have a win under my belt. Next I was matched up against a 1730. I figured if I could smoke Joseph on the reg then this guy wouldn't be a problem. The one thing I was worried about was getting into a boring game so I wanted to keep it sharp. We saw how well that went last time. Again, this was a super interesting game up until everything went south. Still, it was a fun note to end on.
And that sums up my tournament. I'm fairly certain my provisional rating with be in the mid-1300s but that's all gravy. I had a good time and got some experience and actually scored a win. Now all I have to do is grind my standard rating up to my blitz rating which is chilling at 1885. Goals man, goals.
Much Love <3
