My Worst OTB Experience

When I compete in an OTB tournament, I look for more than just a chance to potentially gain rating points or win prize money ―  I look for a special experience, which is why traveling out of town for an OTB tournament is essentially a family vacation; even competing in local tournaments is an opportunity to socialize with the chess community as well as play. So far, I’ve been exceedingly fortunate with my tournament experiences and have had unforgettable opportunities, such as winning prize money at my birthday tournament and also competing at the oldest chess club in America. But this tournament that I will dissect in this post had none of the usual magic, so much so that I consider this to be my least favorite OTB experience despite my decent performance.  In this post, I’ll explain what went wrong as well as cover my game analysis.

This local tournament ― a 15-minute drive from my house ―was held over Thanksgiving weekend (I know, such a prompt recap), so it was an excellent opportunity to regain the rating points that I had lost at a recent club tournament (my rating dropped from a 1547 to 1522). I was optimistic about this event because it offered a good prize fund relative to its size ($500 for 1st place, $250 for 2nd place, and $150 for 3rd place in my division ― all for a $90 entry fee). However, we quickly ran into the tournament’s first problem: inconvenience. The tourney was held at the outskirts of town, and there were no convenient shops nearby; there were hardly any restaurants or stores to grab to eat, and there was no lounge or hangout area for my mother to wait while I played the first round on Friday evening. While this wasn’t a big inconvenience for me (even though it was for my mom), it wasn’t a good omen either. 

The second problem was the venue: nearly all of the tournaments I have seen, heard about, or participated in have been held at a hotel or a club, in a welcoming, comfortable setting. This tournament was held at an office building, which offered none of the charm or comforts of a usual hotel tournament location. 

The final problem was the apparent lack of organization. To begin with, I could not register for the tournament online because their website wasn’t operational yet. The flier stated to send the registration fee via Zelle, but there was no way to indicate which section you wanted to compete in. My mom had to email the organizers several times before all of these details were sorted out. 

When I arrived at the location to compete, the first round began a half hour late because the scoresheets weren’t ready and the pairings were late. These factors combined gave me a bad impression of the tournament; I hope that they improve their logistics and organization for future tournaments.

Despite these setbacks, I was feeling rather confident, as it was only a six-person section, so the planned 6-round Swiss was changed to a 5-round round-robin, meaning that I had a 50/50 chance of winning money. I wanted to get off to a good start, so let’s see how that panned out! 

Round 1

I’m going to be completely honest, that game was massively disappointing. I hung a pawn for free in the opening, which made my position exponentially worse trying to get active, I only won that round due to luck. 

Round 2

The next day, when I returned for the second round, I was paired against the top seed, a 1937 whom I had often seen at my local club, so I was very excited about this matchup. 

My opponent has a combo that finishes the game in style. Can you find it?

He thankfully missed it, so the game progressed.

Once again, my position evaluation was severely lacking; if I want to improve beyond this rating range, I am going to have to brush up on my evaluations. I am not sure why this was a bigger problem in this tournament than usual, but I found myself going into completely dead lost positions in both games despite going into deep thought in critical positions.

Round 3

The next game was a critical point in the tournament: if I won, I would be well on my way to winning a cash prize, but if I lost, I would have to win both of my last games to contend. Let’s see how I performed in such a pivotal game.

Once again I got into a bad position out of the opening due to a misevaluation, which seems to be the story of this tournament. Despite this setback, I fought back well, finding a good plan, and finding the correct defense to my opponent’s sacrifice to force a draw. So overall an up-and-down game.

Round 5

Since I took a bye in Round 4 on Saturday evening due to a prior commitment, I entered the final round at 2/4, which meant if I won, I would likely win second place, if I drew, I would contend for 2nd or 3rd place and if I lost I probably wouldn’t place at all. So let’s see how I performed under pressure!

That was an insane game ―I honestly don’t think I made one singular awful move, I just made a few straight subpar moves in a sharp position, and missed the chance to seize equality after my opponent’s blunder. As usual, I blundered the opening, but even after I recovered and was crushing my opponent, I decided to cash in and defended poorly, which led to an unfortunate turn of events.

This basically sums up my entire tournament, lol…

So in conclusion, perhaps my subpar surroundings did affect my performance (or maybe I just played like a patzer, lol), but I still had some decent results despite a few bad blunders. My rating went from 1522 to 1528 after this, so overall I suppose the tournament was worth it ― these games provided me with a valuable learning experience, and I hope to improve my OTB play after this experience. That’s all for today! Please tell me if you have had any similar regrettable  OTB experiences in the comments. Bye, guys!