July 4th Blitz Tournament
On July 4th I went to Pennsylvania to play in a chess tournament and got 11th place out of a total of 61 players nationwide with a few people in Canada and one from Great Britain. I scored a total of 4.5 points in the tournament and got a series of chess videos with. The winner was William Marcelino who got a score of 6 out of 7 points and rigged up 500 dollars. Gregory Freeze and Lev Zilbermintz tied for 2nd with 5.5 points for 200 dollars. Abhishek Mallela, Joseph Miller and Nick Raptis all scored 5 points for $150 apiece and I tied with Rochelle Wu, Olurotimi Rowland, Jose Castro and William Scoville to get a free movie and a free item from the gift shop in which I picked out a mousepad that would’ve costed about 30 bucks approximately.
The first game I played was against Jose Castro who got lucky in the endgame when I and a crushing attack where I forked his two rooks. I overlooked a king and queen fork that he saw and he won my queen for a rook and a bishop.
The next person I played was William Scoville who I had crushing attacks everywhere on, and I would’ve won against him, but he noticed a perpetual check sequence that led to a draw and my score to be one draw out of two games.
My third opponent was Peter Selvin who was unrated and lost in a total of twelve moves after I did a neat tactic on him. The game went 1. Nf3 d5 2. E4 dxe4 3. Ng5 e5 4. Nxe4 f5 5. Ng3 Nf6 6. Nc3 bc6 7. Bc4 Nc6 8. Nh5 Qe7 9. D3 Na5 10. Nxf6+ Qxf6 11. Nd5 Qc6 12. Bb5 and Peter resigned
The next person I played was Olurotimi Rowland from England rated 1695 and he always came to the club to play, and I always got draws against him, but this time, I wasn’t as lucky and I lost due to a touch move accident that led to immediate checkmate.
The next person I played was Tony Zhou who was rated 1390. He was a well-rounded player who always got the best of their opponents. Thankfully, I won after he didn’t fall for the opening tactic I set, but after a few careless moves, he lost a rook and a pawn and later conceded a win for me.
The next player I was Billy Jobling and he had a great opening, but I profited a rook off of his midgame. In the endgame, I tried to find a hole to push his king into and checkmate him, but there was none. So he kept checking me. To my luck, he flagged after the 3rd check.
Finally, the last person I played was Nowell Sheinwald. He was one of the highest ranked players in the tournament at 1846. Disregarding the rating however, I played for a win and that was the result when he did a Scandinavian opening against me. I knew the only follow up would be an Icelandic Gambit which I hate so I countered with a Tennyson Gambit that made him cough up his queen.
So in the end I am quite proud of my result, but I could’ve done better due to a whole bunch of silly mistakes I made. I got the 2nd highest in my state and the 11th highest in the whole tournament so that was god enough for me.
