King's Island Open #2
In classic Alex style, my camera's batteries went dead as I tried to tape my first video update this morning. The hotel gift shop is charging $5 for really bad batteries, so I guess I'll just do a video recap of the event.
As I type, it's an hour away from Round 3. I'm 1-1 and playing very solidly. Even my loss was a game in which I played very well overall.
My first round was against Gary Poturalski. He was rated 1468, but with a correspondence rating over 2000. His last 5 or 6 tournaments have all been the King's Island Open. I'm not ashamed of the loss, because for a while I really had him worried. He's definitely a better player than I am, so I consider it a 2nd place, not a loss.
I slept well last night, despite the loss. And felt great going into the round this morning at 11am. Gilbert L. Stone is "technically" rated above me for this tournament, but actually rated below me for the December published rating. This was a great, grinding game. I never felt like I lost momentum as white, and once he pushed his h-pawn, I felt like I had attacking lines all the time. That, and I pushed him into a time scramble during the primary time control, and I think he lost some positional strength because he was down to about 20 seconds at move 40.
The only blemish on the game was I found Gilbert taking notes concerning the game. I ended up walking over to a TD while I got some water and asked, "I think my opponent is taking notes; I know he's definitely writing down more than his moves and he won't let me see. Is that allowed?" He stopped without question after the TD came over, but afterwards he said "You don't really think I was cheating, do you?" I came up with some bs so I didn't sound like a jerk, but I find it out he didn't realize that... yes - you were cheating. Taking notes is cheating. Stop it.
Anyway. I'm having fun and feel good about my chess. If I get some batteries I'll put up a vlog like I promised. Happy playing!
