A Modest Showing at SCL's 2018 Championship (Part 1/2)
In January 2019 The Slow Chess League organized its second annual championship tournament in which 25 players with ratings ranging from 774 to 1890 played a 5-round Swiss tournament here at Chess.com's live servers over 5 weeks. It was by far the most serious and exciting online chess tournament I ever played. This is the first half of a report on how it went for me, with deep analyses of my first 2 games.
2018 has been a good chess year for me. I’ve gained a lot of experience in practical game-play, which was perhaps the most important lack in my game in the past years. For this I’m very grateful to the good people who’ve created and smoothly run the Slow Chess League, which allowed me to play 56 slow games during the year, almost meeting the limit Botvinnik set for professional chess players (60)! And I finally started to collect the results of my new training regimen and new approach to openings, almost establishing myself as a 1700 player (I'll say ‘almost’ until I surpass 1750).
I was quite optimistic when I joined the Championship tournament because I thought on a very good day I had a chance against anyone who was participating this year, and I set the goal of at least staying in contention for the title until the finish.
The first round was a no-show by my opponent and was recorded as a win for me, but it’s a little disappointing since on the first round I would be likely to get paired against someone I have high chances of defeating, and I missed that chance to warm up.
In the second round I got paired with SergeLedan, whose rating at the time was 1237, against my 1723. The odds look very much in my favour, but Serge could be a very dangerous opponent, and in fact in our latest encounter prior to this round I had lost in a tactically very complicated game. I still remember the shock the moment I realized I was completely lost after 18…fxe3 when I was up a whole rook. So I had to be quite cautious in my optimism, but our second round game went more smoothly than I expected:
CAP Score: 97.59 for White and 21.91 for Black which rates my play slightly below Anatoly Karpov! Uhm, thanks, but we all know that those scores do not really reflect what happened in this game. I was happy with the result: in a Swiss championship like this you simply must score the full point in the first couple of rounds where you’re rated with weaker players, and I delivered. But objectively speaking, it was a case of the lower rated player self-destructing rather than the higher rated player demonstrating his superiority with strong play. I was on 2-0 now and I knew the next round would be much more difficult…
…but not this difficult. I was hoping to get someone 1500-ish and win after a fight, but for Round 3 I got the Black pieces and was paired with dr_chessdad, a strong 1826-rated player, and the 3rd seed in the tournament! You kind of wish to meet level in only the 4th round, maybe even the 5th if you’re very lucky. I still had reasons to be optimistic though: well, one is that you have to be optimistic if your goal is becoming the league champion, and secondly, in the only game we had previously played, I had defeated dr_chessdad in a very nice game where I had managed to get his Queen trapped with an only-move made by the King. (For an analysis of that game, which was played at the SCL 2017 Championship, see this blog post: https://www.chess.com/blog/philidor_position/scl-championship-r4-finally-a-win-and-a-pretty-one-at-that)
But there was no doubt that he is the stronger player between the two of us, and I had to be ready for a very difficult fight. One further note: unfortunately I did not have time to do any opening preparation before the game and came in clueless. Here's the Round 3 game:
This just might be my most thrilling chess game ever. I don’t recall my heart-rate getting that high up during play before. Some of the good:
- It was nice that I was able to reproduce theory completely on my own until 8…e5?!
- I’m quite proud of the whole sequence of moves I made from 17…h5 to 25…Bh5, grabbing the initiative, rearranging all my minor pieces and taking over the advantage, virtually forcing my opponent to go for a perpetual.
- I played the rook ending better than I expected with about 30-seconds per move.
And the bad:
- I got eventually outplayed in the opening and got myself in a very cramped position.
- I reacted badly when my opponent simply refused to take the perpetual. 36…Ra8?? was made in a state of panic. On any other day my opponent would have spotted the mate in 3 and I’d have lost the game.
- More generally, I did not spend my time wisely.
Move of the game: 30...Qc3!! by dr_chessdad, which was difficult to see and solves White's problems very effectively.
CAP Score: 94.01 for White and 95.41 for Black, rating me between Steinitz and Morphy. Disappointing, considering I was playing like Karpov just the week before, but I’ll take it! This game is not the most accurate among the 4 games I played, but I still think, even with the blunders and all, it was my best game in virtue of the 17...h5 to 25...Bh5 sequence.
That's it for the first half of the report. Thanks to my opponents for the good games. In Part 2/2 of this mini blog series, which I’ll post in a couple of days, I’ll analyse my games in the final two rounds of the Championship. Stay tuned! And if you like slow chess and would like to play very neatly organized monthly online tournaments, make sure you join the Slow Chess League. It’s happening right here on Chess.com!
