OTB Tournament Review : Round 1 Game Analysis
ROUND 1 : Partially Gained Notoriety.
Have you heard the gospel of our good shepperd Portable Game Notation? As a programmer who left for other fields of work, it remains second nature to solve problems through algorithms. It keeps creeping back into my chores: old habits from more than a decade ago! Seeing how PGN chess notation can help us develop analysis prompted me to integrate it into my OTB tournament review blog. This autumn OTB semi-rapid tournament was a fun occasion to enter the FQE pool of rated players. It was broken down in 5 rounds, close to 50 players, with a time format of 25min.|5sec. This series of articles will focus on a single OTB game per entry. It'll be coupled with a look at a cool art piece featuring chess references that got my attention that week. The "FIDE rating" series of blog will resume for the next tournament study (mid-November). Game on!
Game 1 Review
Getting ready for the road trip to the location of the tournament that morning, all I knew was that I wanted to take my time while playing each game. The trip was about an hour and a half, getting me closer to Vermont than Ontario. Being held in an humble location, it would help me focus on the event instead of tourism in the vicinity. The matchups were made soon after the hour of registration came around. Ding! Begin round one : where my emotions confirmed the stress would be manageable. I was matched-up against a Vietnamese-Canadian in his forties. We were close in age, but having some experience in FQE already about 10 years - which reflects my decades long chess hiatus. Not wanting to be scared by numbers on a piece of paper, I decided to double my patience and use at minimum the same time as my opponent each move.
At first glance, the Chess.com coach confirmed what the circumstances of the game were : SERIOUS!
The opening was a King's Pawn opening (1. e4 d6), which turned into a Pirc Defense with my retorts (2. d4 e5), before transposing into the Philidor Defense when my opponent sent his Knight into the fray (3. Ne3 Bg4). The King's Pawn opening and it's ramifications in the Sicilian are still occult to me so I had to be moreso careful. Getting into the game of a renowned music & chess enthusiast was a wonderful happening for my 1st OTB game in ages. Love the coincidence!
Here I preferred to start the exchanges, trading pans, which brought us into unknown territories in the Chess.com database.
You will notice that having put the game in the PGN you see displayed below means I had to enter the english algebraic notation of the game into the file. This meant I had to translate from french notation to english before making use of that game notation. I know this will help me with memorization of lines doing such translations, as it works the mind in different ways atop the more popular mnemonics commonly used. Seeing how the Forsyth-Edwards Notation work also speaks to me even more than basic Algebraic notation it "gelled" and made more sense than ever conceptually.
For the time being though, we must concede that I had to face tough positions caused in part by my reluctance to let the rooks control the G and H files. We went through some tough exchanges and those are showcased in the PGN review, alongside alternate lines I've explored during analysis. The Queen trade happened early enough, but the dueling rooks were the salvation my King needed to extend our duel.
Nobody loves conceding, yet had I continued it would have been a winless situation. The further moves analysis of the game presented that the only advances made would change, but that my opponent would indubitably reach the end of the board to promote a pawn. Having reached a 73.1% accuracy ain't shabby considering the situations. I'll gladly settle with that 0-1 for the 1st round, seeing how some players had been routed with checkmates under 5 minutes. We'll see how round 2 went for me in next week's blog. I'll end this review with the stats of the Game analysis engine :
