Fist Pump!
Oh yeah!!! Oh YEAH!!! Oh yeeee-aaaaah!
Sometimes it just feels so good, right? right?
After yesterday's game, I was pretty sure that I had "played myself into shape." Although the game was a not-so-amazing draw, I was starting to feel like myself at the board, and I signed off my blog with the optimistic thought that I'd have good games to show later in the tournament. This optimism was further confirmed this morning, when I threw another Tactics Trainer session in, while waiting for Sam to get up for breakfast. (he asked for another 10 or 15 minutes for 2 hours until breakfast was about to close and I prodded him mercilessly). I did great today, solving them faster, seeing solutions, seeing possible defenses, and on the problems I got wrong, I either a) understood why I got it wrong, or more often-- played a secondary winning continuation instead of the first. So it was a good session, and I continued to feel pretty optimistic.
Then I spent probably two hours looking at openings that I had dreamed about during the night, far more time than I usually spend on prep nowadays. One of my best friends reminded me just as I was leaving for the round to remember my goals. This was a great and timely advice, so I put my openings out of my mind on the walk to the site, in order to think about my goals. However, it was raining and I was getting quite wet in my chesskid t-shirt, so I ended up just thinking about rain and being wet. Luckily my opponent was five minutes late, and during those five minutes, I refocused on my over-arching goals.
Here is the game:
Boy that felt gooooood! Now if you think I was pumped after that, imagine how pumped I would have been if the game went this way:
Ok, let's see what tomorrow has in store!
By the way, the Elite Section had a rest day today. Magnus + the Magicians will be back in action tomorrow.
