Round 2: a lucky, undeserved win

I managed to win my group in round 1 without too much drama, with a score of 22/22. I even played a pretty cool game which won a best-blog prize. But against the stronger opponents of round 2 my path wouldn't be so easy...

A Smooth Start

My round started pretty smoothly, with some convincing wins against weaker players. Against TheBigSleep1946 I was able to get a double-edged position out of the opening (an Accelerated Queen's Indian) and then punished his oversight with a sacrificial attack.

I didn't think this was a particularly impressive game at the time, but later I decided to submit it for a best-game-prize. The judges do clearly prefer miniatures with sacrificial mating attacks.

Against mekumcu I again won pretty smoothly. I got another double-edged opening and even got to play a queen sacrifice.

At this point I was feeling pretty confident—a little too confident. My excuse is that getting to perform a rook sac and a queen sac in the same round somehow dulled my sense of danger. I subconsciously believed that all my games would be opportunities for me to show off, but I was in for a rude awakening.

Disaster

Against G00d_Habitz everything seemed to be going my way until the very end...

That was a close one, but not a 'disaster'. Hopefully this section is just mislabeled and nothing tragic is coming...

Against DARK_QUEEN I played the opening very provocatively, got rewarded with a winning middlegame, but then lost the thread.

After losing to DARK_QUEEN, I checked the tournament table. To my horror he had the best score by far. He had already finished all his games (except one remaining game against me). He won all of them except for 3 which were draws, for a score of 19.5. What's more, he was doing quite well in his last game with me and could reasonably draw it, for a score of 20/22. If I was going to come back and win the round, I'd need to buckle down and grind out a score of 20.5 or better. In other words, I could only get one draw in my remaining games—the rest had to be wins.

Two Close Games, part 1

Against Seba89G I played the opening inaccurately, but seemed to get back to equality.

Since I already lost one game to DARK_QUEEN, I figured he'd win our mini-match. By extension, I assumed I'd lose on tiebreak if we finished with the same score. In reality in the case of a tie, we'd both move on to the next round, but I didn't know that at the time. My reasoning was that I would probably draw the Seba89G game. If I then drew my second game with DARK_QUEEN, I'd finish with 20/22 (assuming I won the rest of my games) and DARK_QUEEN would also finish with 20/22, when he would win on tiebreak. So from my perspective I had to win the following game to make out out of the group.

While I was in suspense about my two closest games of the round, I still needed to win the rest of my games.

Showing Good Technique

Fortunately versus W-P-M-L, I got another smooth win.

My final game was tense throughout, but I eventually was able to convert it in a double-edged endgame.

In retrospect, I think that was my best game of the round. Though, somehow chess.com's game review is always most critical of the games I'm most proud of.

Two Close Games, part 2

With the rest of my games won, I now just had to close out my two closest games. Against Seba89G I thought we were headed for a drawn rook ending, but in reality he could've reached a nearly winning rook endgame.

With that epic battle completed, only one game remained. I had outperformed my goal of drawing only one game against everyone not named DARK_QUEEN. And because I had won all those games, I only needed a draw to win the group. But a loss in this second game versus DARK_QUEEN would lose me the group because he would end with 20.5/22 and I'd end with 20/22. Would my nerves hold?!

Huzzah! I moved on from my group, and all it took was a ridiculous helping of luck. I'm not sure I learned anything though. Perhaps going forward I should rely more on endgame technique and less on speculative openings? Meh, that's probably not true. Surely I only got the better of these opponents in endgames because they were lower rated.

Anyway, thanks for reading!