Weekend tournament in L'Isle-Adam

Last month I played in a tournament in L'Isle-Adam, a small town close to Paris. It was the first time that I played with a "shortened classical" time control, 60 minutes + 30 seconds per move. As I learned, the tournaments using this time control could be rated for standard Elo rating, as long as all players are under 2400. I did not know that this format existed but, apparently, it is quite popular, especially for the weekend players, as it allows for more games into a shorter amount of time. That was exactly the case here, as the organizers managed to cram 6 rounds into Saturday and Sunday.

The tournament turned out to be stronger than I thought - 1 IM, 6 FMs and 35 (probably underrated) kids in a field of 52 players. And yet somehow the "experience" managed to hold its own this time, with 3 out of 4 top finishers being adults  

I started by winning the first two games, and both of them were over relatively quickly. I was still spending quite a bit of time on my moves but noticed that many of the younger players treated this time control more like blitz and rapid. If I am not mistaken, in the first round my opponent resigned whilst still having half an hour on his clock. Not that I minded, as it gave me an opportunity to rest before the 2nd round. I spent the extra time walking around the town, with its idyllic riverbanks and the ancient buildings in the town center:

Returning to chess - in the 2nd round I played perhaps my "cleanest" game in this tournament:

Starting from the 3rd round, I was only playing against other titled players. The first one was the 14-year-old FM Zayne-Eddine El Zein, rated 2317. The game was hovering around equality until I got into time trouble, then I made a few mistakes, and my position started to look suspicious. My opponent could have won a pawn but passed on that in favor of attack that did not yield more than a move repetition. 

After the first day I had 2.5 points out of 3. My next opponent was FM David Lacan-Rus (2325), another talented junior. At 13 years he already has an impressive resume, having won U10 World championship title in 2021 and bronze medal at U12 world championship last year. The pairings for the next round were published the night before and it appears that my opponent used the extra time to prepare an opening surprise:

I was very pleased with this game. Young players tend to progress super fast, one has to beat them while one still can!

Alas, my tournament went a bit downhill from there. In the 5th round I got a promising position against a fellow "adult" player, FM Julien Laurent (2142), but started to hallucinate a bit in my calculations, spent a lot of time and the game ended in a draw around move 20. 

In the last round I was paired up to IM Tom Decuigniere (2367), who scored 5/5 to that point. I did not know the opening, my opponent knew that he could clinch the tournament with a draw, so the game ended before it really started.

The other leaders played out their last-round games to a decisive result, so I ended up outside of the podium, which I think was only fair, given my lack of energy in the last two rounds. 

Here is the link to the final standings on the website of Fédération Française des Échecs and the photo from the award ceremony: