2022 New Zealand Congress - A Switch From Online to OTB

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Updated: Mar 22, 2022, 2:17 AM | 7

Warning: I've discovered a glitch that the games won't show up, to fix you just have to reload the page.

Hello everyone, I hope you're all doing well

Once again I fail to upload regularly so I'm sorry about that, a surprising amount of you have asked when I'm making my '10 Ways to Improve at Blitz' post and I apologise because each time I say 'coming very soon' but I still haven't done it, I promise I will do it in the next months though! I would've done it now but since I thought I would get this done before it becomes irrelevant!

This is my experience playing in the biggest tournament of my life (so far), I aim on making this a story about my journey through it, but I also hope to help you learn something from my experience!

This blog will be split up into 3 sections

Switching from Online to OTB
The Games
Post Tournament Thoughts

If that sounds interesting to you, enjoy the read If it sounds boring, it's not my fault, I play the London System, I'm sorry

The Switch

There are 3 type of chess player's these days, (generally speaking)

The 100% Online Player
The Online and OTB Player
The 100% OTB Player

Now I fit in the first category, I play an absurd amount of online chess, on chess.com alone I spent 72 thousand minutes playing chess! (According to AimChess)

and because of the pandemic I hadn't gone to a single OTB tournament in all of 2021, which, to say the least, is a problem when you're going to your first ever classical tournament. Now for those of you who don't know the problems of being an 100% online player, there are a couple,

The first issue is your huge loss in 'vision' you are more likely to miss more tactics and make more blunders than you would ever online because your eyes are more used to staring at the 2D screen rather than a 3D board.

The second issue is lacking OTB experience which means you are going to second guess yourself a lot and you will take a lot longer to do a move simply because you are being extra pre-cautious about the move.

The third and final issue (that I can think of) is being able to calculate, online you can draw as many arrows as you want, however (shockingly) you are unable to draw arrows in OTB, which means you have to use your brain to think of the position and you'll have to imagine the calculation, and (once again) you'll find you are a lot weaker than you should be.

So how did I go about trying to improve my OTB skills?

At first I was hoping to find a local player of similar strength but I couldn't find any, (I did find one 1700 standard (NZCF) but he wasn't available for it :/) so instead after asking some friends who were also going to the same tournament and had much more OTB experience, I started practicing tactics on my little chess board, this helped me visualize the board and work on my calculations, secondly I would then play against the computer at a random strength and versus it on the board.

And lastly I found a training partner online (who was also going to the tournament) and we would message each other our respective moves and play on the board.

So that's how I went about switching from online to OTB, did it pay off? Slightly got me used to a board but as you'll find out, I was still lacking a lot of vision which cost me some games!

The Games

Now the fun part! How did the games go? How will did your boy preform, is he on that road to year 13 GM, well if you want to find out look at the games, if you want to the short answer highlight the text: Of course not, I play online and grind ub and bullet, obviously i did horribly, although i got some nice games...

Now a little preschedule of what's going on, I signed up for 4 tournaments, the NZ Championship (9 rounds of 90+30 +move 40 30min added) the NZ Junior Championship (6 Rounds of 60+30) NZ Blitz Championship (9 rounds of 3+2) and NZ Rapid Championship (9 rounds of 25+5)

So here is going to be how it goes:

9 Games of NZ Championship with detailed analysis

Summary of NZ Rapid Championship

Stats of all Tournaments

P.S There are a lot of inside jokes, and ratings are NZCF

So well enjoy here are my tournament games:

Game 1: Fierce Attacking Player vs. An Energetic Lad

We were told our 1st opponent on the day, so I honestly had no idea who I would be versing, although I was informed by friends of a rough idea who I would be playing, and I could find nothing on this player, so instead I chose to just relax and hope I play a good game of chess.

However about 5 minutes I was warned before that my opponent was a very aggressive player, so with that in mind I entered my first classical game of my life.

For those of you who were experiencing a game 1 masterpiece, sorry, but I was pretty satisficed with my first ever classical game, and yes I did lose, but the game lasted 4 hours and I didn't feel tired and I think it all game to that one critical point in the game which I missed, but I was happy because I felt I had done better than I was expecting and had calculated deep into lines, something I've never really done before.

Analytics of the Game: (Based of Chess.com depth 30 Analysis)

Game 2: An Air Conditioner vs. Living & Breathing Legend

Now my next opponent is my favourite chess player, I started as a fan for him but now I'm an air conditioner (yes a stolen joke from youtube comments) my opponent (little did I know at the time) would later best IM's FM's and CM's alike, and coming 2nd in the Rapid Championship, a true legend, also a member of the elite TNG group. Now me being also a member of TNG made this a very emotional match for the gang. Now once again I had some last second advice on my opponent, I was warned that he was a book, so obviously I chose to play my solid London system and have a proper game! No no no of course not, you'll see what I did.