I played in my very first chess tournament!

This weekend I had an opportunity to play in a local tournament called the Labor Day Action. It was my first OTB tournament and I had a ton of fun. I will be showing the 4 games I played. For context, the time control was 45 minutes with a 5 second delay, and I was playing in the U1700 section because I was unrated. 

Game 1!

In this game I was pretty nervous and I had the black pieces against an 8th grader.

This win was a very good start to the tournament and queen sac at the end made it a really nice finish. I honestly thought the game would be a draw up until I won the pawn and I think both of us missed some chances.

Game 2!

I got black again in this game and was matched up with a college student who was at around 1380.

I thought I played pretty well in this game and I didn't see the blunder that both of us missed until I got home. I think I converted my advantage really well and that my positional play was really good.

Game 3

This game was against a very friendly older gentleman and I was excited because I had finally gotten the white pieces.

I felt very confident throughout this whole game and I could tell my opponent was getting frustrated. Overall I though I played pretty solid other than Bc3.

Game 4

The section had 15 players so this match was essentially to decide who won the section. I ended up getting the black pieces vs a 5th grader, rated around 1000, who was also on 3/3.

And that was the tournament! I went 4/4 and won the Amateur section! I thought that even though the tournament was small it was a lot of fun. I was worried that I was not going to do well in the longer time format but for some reason it didn't feel that long! I will definitely do more OTB tournaments in the future.