Portland Spring Open 2012 Part 2

I meant to do this a couple months ago, and the games deserved it, but I got distracted and  then just never made time. This will be less informative as I don't remember the games as well as I would have if I had written this immediately after the tournament like I did with part 2. I am going to put rounds 3-5 just to get it done.

Round 3 I had white against Harry Forrest Buerer, I had never played him before, but I was under the assumption he was a very solid player, though not particularly strong. I got this assumption from what I had watched of his games in rounds 1 and 2. The USCF webpage says hes only been playing in tournaments since late 2011, so I think he probably took up chess more seriously after retirement. 

I didn't give any alternate lines that game because I'm doing it in a bit of a rush, and nothing is particularly complex about it. After the first 3 games I was 2.5/3. As this was the reserve section and I was I think the highest rated player in it at about 1730, that is about where I should be. This was the last game of Saturday, I was pretty exhausted by the end of it, and he probably was too. I was glad to be able to go to my friends house and get some sleep.

Round 4 was against Frederick Davis a strong junior (under 18) player from Washington. He was rated 1650 at the time, so definitely within the realm of giving me problems and I had black. As you can see in the game, it pretty quickly went downhill, I guess thats what happens when I try to play sharp Sicilian lines without having any idea about what book is.

Now I was 2.5/4 which isn't where I wanted to be as the top seed in the Reserve section, but oh well. Some tournaments you just don't play that well, and this was one of them.  In round 5 I got white against Leo Sun. Leo, his father Bing, and his brother Max are from Corvallis, so I have Leo and Max develop over the years, and so I knew it would be challenging. My impression with lots of younger players is that they have good opening knowledge, but the rest of their play lacks some depth, whether true or not, given my lack of book knowledge, I like to try to avoid any opening traps by playing somewhat atypically. It almost gets me in trouble this game, but I sneak in a couple tactics and win.

And that was round 5. So I ended up 3.5/5. Which is fine, it is still a +2 result, but I really wasn't playing accurate chess, and I got into trouble a few times that I shouldn't have. My rating went down a few points, but it was good to play even if I didn't play well.  4th place out of 27 people, and I didn't play any of the players in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place, so that 1st round draw really sort of skewed my results. Congrats to Clemen Deng who won the tournament (I did play his brother Leo).