Norms
Hi everyone, I will introduce myself to you later. Today let me just share with you with my great adventure in chess. I have had my good and bad moments, but it is all exciting.
First I played in the Golden State Open in January. I did pretty good ending with 6.0/9 and scoring my first IM norm. The highlight of my tournament had to be drawing Super GM Li Chao.
Here I am White in an endgame where Black obviously has the initiative. He is attacking my e4 pawn and a passive defense like Kf3 will be met by Rd4. So what did I do then? I would like to prove to my dad that I could draw super GM. I was able to find Rc7! I attack his other pawns and he can not take my pawn without giving up one of his. The game ended in a draw. It was my first Super GM game and I am very pleased to be able to draw it. I made my norm 1 point above what was needed and only half a point behind a GM norm.
In my second tournament I played in the UTD Spring FIDE Tournament. This was a preparation tournament for the final four. Many strong players attended from all over the world. In the last round of the tournament I was up against a 2300 player from India. I needed a win.
In this position I am Black and it is my turn. He has just played Nf4 threatning my pawn on h5. I didn't really consider this since it seemed like I was totally winning after Bxf4. But after gxf4 it's not that simple. I decided to opt for g6. After this move he really doesn't have much choice. He took twice and played Ka2. But I was able to quickly bring my King into position and I got my second norm.
For my third norm tournament I played in the Philly Open. I started off brilliantly getting 4/5 with a 2600+ performance. Then I lost two games in a row. But the learning is great from these 2 games. Below is my round 7 game with GM Alex Fishbein. Try to solve the puzzle, it is White to move.
I ended up losing that game. After my incredible performance of 4/5 I lost two games in a row. I won round 8 and in the last round I was facing off against IM Bindi Cheng from Canada. I only needed a draw for my last IM norm.
Instead my opponent played Ke2. Try to see if you can find my only defense.
And I was able to survive and get a draw. I made my three norms with the ability to see combinations, but also I had a lot of luck along the way. Doing a lot of tactics on Chess.com has been very useful. Thanks for following me on my adventure, and I'll see you next time!
