The Idaho Scholastic Chess Championship 2022!
The Idaho Scholastic Chess Championship.
Okay, it all begins with me being a kid. Why does that have anything to do with this? Because I can't play unless I'm a kid. And unless I qualified. Which brings me to the next part of this blog post. I played in the Idaho West Regional Chess Scholastic Tournament in February, got first place in the K-5 section and qualified for the Idaho Scholastic Chess Championship with a 5/5 score. I was preparing quite hard, about 5 - 7 hours of chess a day in the week before the tournament. The day before the tournament I felt ready.
The Idaho Scholastic Chess Championship was on March 26th and besides me, my brother and cousin also qualified. In the morning we drove to the Riverside hotel where the tournament was being held and registered ourselves. We waited for about thirty minutes for everyone to show up and the pairings were up. The tournament directors repeated the rules for any beginners and the games started. Here is my first game.
Game 1
My unrated opponent quickly blundered his pieces and got checkmated. The game had finished in about 10 minutes, so I had a long time to wait before the next game started. Once it was finally time to play, I went back to the playing hall.
Here is the next game.
Game 2
This player was also unrated however he played quite well. Until he got forked. After I finished my game, I went to look at the other games. As soon as the round finished there was a 45-minute lunch break. During the lunch break we went outside and had fun riding on scooters on the slopes of the green belt. When we got back to the boards, the tournament directors gave us little slips of paper. We were supposed to put our name on them and then put them in a bag. Then they used the slips of paper for a raffle. My brother got something. It was a book called "How to reassess your chess", a book that I own! When the raffle was finished, we got to our games.
Here is the next game.
Game 3
As you can see, she blundered a piece and things were easy for me after that. After I won the game, I walked around and relaxed before the next round and soon it was time to play again. I was playing the top seed but managed to pull off a win.
Game 4
This was a great game. I think my opponent simply missed that his bishop on h6 was hanging. Then after I made a queen, he resigned. When all the games were finished in round 4, the players had a group photo with everybody who was competing and their parents. After this everyone went back to the playing hall and took their seats. My opponent was quite enthusiastic and obviously thought she would beat me, but then when she asked what my online chess.com rating was, and I said it was 1400 she visibly got a little bit scared. I think this was the reason she missed some good moves.
Here is the final game of the tournament:
Game 5
As you can see, it was a draw. After Ke3 I realized that I made a blunder, and knowing it would be a draw anyway, took the draw she offered. I thought I would win on tiebreaks. As we waited for the award ceremony, I played freeze tag with my chess friends and played a little bit of computer games.
RECAP!
So, it turned out that somehow Olivia beat me on tiebreaks even though I had beaten the top seed. I got second place in the K-5 section and got invited to the Tournament Of Champions, which was to be held the next day. I was quite sad, but I played well enough I suppose. I want to thank my coach, @imivangalic Ivan for helping me to improve and get ready for the tournament. For now all I can do is prepare for the next tournament.
Thank you for reading and please leave a comment.
