On the Road (the first time)

I've always been a little jealous of our UK and European city club hopping chess brothers and sisters, with many local clubs within pawn chucking distance of each other. Here in the Northwest it seems like getting to another club involves Oregon Trail level prep beforehand, nevertheless I've always wanted to make a trip down to the Portland Chess Club, if only to see for myself that what they were writing in Northwest Chess wasn't a total fabrication. So, when I saw the Portland Fall Open on the October calendar, I rustled up a few pounds of flour and pemmican in my saddle bags and headed south at the crack of dawn -- literally, as I needed to leave at 630 AM to make the 10 AM start time. Fortunately there's usually no traffic on a Saturday and it was smooth trails all the way down. 

The Fall Open looked particularly interesting because of its new to me format: G/90 with a 30 second increment and only 4 rounds. I think I read somewhere the Portland club changed to this format so as not to cram so much chess in one weekend and leave more time between rounds. In contrast a typical Seattle tournament is 5 games, either over three days or in two days with a fast G/60 first round, and longer games at 40/120 with SD/60.

I think I'm a fan of the Portland time control, the pace felt much more relaxed, though used to the longer Seattle format I was in time trouble for most of my games. Another plus for an out of town player is it leaves evenings mostly free. While I do want to travel to tournaments in the future I've never liked the idea of going to another city just to play chess all day and night -- I feel if I'm going to travel I'd much rather combine sightseeing with playing. 

The Portland club itself is smaller than Seattle's, but with a few nice perks. The skittles room (pictured above) has a garage door that opens it up to the outside. In nice weather as we had this is great, though otherwise the room is much smaller than desirable. I really liked the playing room's table layout, which leaves much more room for most players. 

I had played in the reserve (u1700) at my last tournament so I entered the Open. Looking at past results I had an idea I would be one of the lowest rated and out of about 16 Open players I think I was 15th, which paired me with an A player who I vaguely recognized seeing at a Seattle tournament...

I may file this game in my most memorable blunders but at the time I felt it was a promising start. My time management however was atrocious, and I think I can start to improve it by better focus in picking candidate moves and improving my currently amorphous approach to calculating lines.

With White in the next round I wanted to play a more aggressive game from the start and I got my wish...

The club is in a suburban area of Southwest Portland with several nice parks nearby. Spring Garden was a short walk away and a good place to relax between rounds. Saturday night friends took me to Marukin Ramen and I drowned my sorrows in pork tonkatsu, though to be honest I did not have many sorrows to drown. Even though I was now 0-2 I was happy about my play overall; it definitely feels like my level of play is higher than six months ago.  The next day my Airbnb host recommended Baker and Spice and the Hillsdale Farmer's Market and they were a good way to start Sunday morning, and I arrived at the club refreshed and determined to win a point. 

I was paired against Abbie Wu, a name I thought I recognized from NW Chess as an up and coming junior. Unfortunately the game showed me I still don't have a good grasp of the Alekhine...

Active piece play is especially important in the Alekhine and I completely failed at that in this game.

With 0-3 I had a forced bye the next round, but fortunately the TD gave me a game as a house player. To my pleasant surprise (because I think it's the first time I've seen it OTB) he played the Alekhine as black. I was so excited I think I played the most testing line I could think of, and we ended up in this position:

Black has just moved Qb8. Rather than go for the pawn I shifted the attack to the kingside and did my utmost to break through, but Mike defended tenaciously and 20 moves later we were in a Q+B vs Q+N endgame where I was up a pawn, although it was a doubled pawn on the a file. Both of us down to a few minutes, Black eventually flagged in a slightly worse position.

While my performance rating in the end wasn't great at around 1520, I still feel good about my first two games. The third game was more of a fiasco and my play there needed a lot of work.

My objectively poor result did not, of course, stop me from the rewards of a late night Sunday visit to Powell's...