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A Tale of Two Halves- My Latest Tournament Part Two

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derriklarone
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So last time we left off at the end of Day One of my last chess tourney. I had played quite horribly but managed to win one game against a 1800. 

Going into Day Two, I felt like I was in a must win situation. I fight for the whole point every game and do not like to draw games. I was going to win my last two games at all costs. 

Round Four: Near Perfect 

In Round 4 I got a pretty good pairing against one of the lower rated players in the tourney. I had the black pieces against a 1400.

What happened. Well, things went amazingly, my evaluations seemed to be right on and my calculation and canidate move selections were execellent. I played one of the best games of my life, if not one of the best games. I used 117 minutes of my clock (the time control was G/120).

In the opening I played fairly quickly as most of it was book moves and also I knew this variation of the Ruy Lopez pretty well. Maybe the start of his problems was the superficial move 10.Bc2 and my plan soon became simple: attack e4. I took a ton of time (almost 50 minutes!) on move 15 and found 15...c6 which kept my slight advantage. My opponent missed a few defensive chances in the middlegame that would be hard for anyone to find. 18.Nf1 was probably my opponent's first real mistake. I was then able to find another good move 20...Re6 (another move which I had taken a insanely massive amount of time on) which is the only move to keep the advantage. 22...Bc6 was my only mistake the whole game (22...d5! was close to winning) and my opponent could have had serious chances to survive if he had played 23.Qd3!. My opponent played 23.Nd2? instead and after 23...d5! my opponent position began to collapse. I was down to ten minutes by then but reeled in the game by playing amazingly precisely in time trouble.

At the end of the game, I had approxiametly 3 minutes left on my clock and my opponent had over 55 minutes. At times during the game my opponent had an hour advantage on the clock. I was very happy after the game because I played so well.
Round 5: A Neat Win
In Round 5 I was paired up against a 2040 rated player. I once again was determined to win. My opponent had the black pieces and played a weird Sicilian which soon transposed into a type of Maroczy Bind position. I was slighty better but then my opponent played 10...Be6, I move I had never seen played in this structure before and after 11.Nxe6 fxe6 I had great chances for a big edge. I missed my chances and totally missed my opponets idea. The plan I choose had one big flaw: the tactical shot 17...Rxf3 after which I am almost lost. However, I did not quit and my opponent soon missed a win. I got a position in which I was a pawn down but I had plenty of compensation. From that point on, my opponent played horribly. I made some inaccuracies in reply to a couple of his mistakes but eventually I got a Queen and Rook vs Queen and Knight ending in which I played very well. His poor play in this ending helped me wrap up the game quickly. His last blunder absolutely shocked me.
After the game I was happy. I had just beaten my first opponent rated over 2000.
So I finished the tournament with the score of 3 wins and 2 losses and managed to win the top U1800 cash prize.
After this tournament I am geared up for an exciting summer season of chess. Hopefully, I will break 2000 soon.