Weekend tournament in L'Isle-Adam

Last month I took part 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. A few years ago, FIDE decided that 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 events, as it allows to cram more games into a shorter amount of time. That was exactly the case here, with 6 rounds across 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 next round. I spent the extra time walking around the town, with its idyllic riverbanks and the ancient buildings in the center:

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

Starting from the 3rd round, I was paired only against other titled players. The first one was the 14-year-old FM Zayne-Eddine El Zein (2317). The game was hovering around equality until I got into time trouble and made a few mistakes. My opponent could have won a pawn but passed on it 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 old 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, so one should defeat 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 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 with IM Tom Decuigniere (2367), who scored 5/5 to that point. I did not know the opening and my opponent offered a draw that would clinch the tournament for him, so the game ended very quickly.

The games between the other leaders were all decisive, so I ended up just outside of the podium, in the 4th place. I think that 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:

Kudos to the organizers for a well-run tournament and special thanks for the photos of the playing hall and the award ceremony!