
A Candidate for my best win?
The first round of the 2023 Chess.com competition was pretty dull. Multiple time outs on move 1 as expected, and the rest were pretty weak. My closest competitor played about 10 book moves but fell apart moves immediately after, and finished well back on 18 points versus my 22. Round 2 will of course be a different matter entirely with 11 decent opponents. I'll have to wait until the middle of March for that.
As I said earlier, I've also been playing some tough competitions during the winter break from leagues. One of the fun things about chess.com is coming up against really good players. I found myself playing a CM, Florian Atzl, with a FIDE rating of 2145 though he plays a lot weaker than that on chess.com. First game as black I got a really good position out of the Scandi, but couldn't quite see how to force home the advantage and then blundered with an unsound sacrifice:
A disappointing end to a fun game. I was hopeful of a good game with white, and then this happened:
That's my first win against a titled player, albeit one who (based on his rating) doesn't always take his games that seriously.