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My 2nd OTB Chess Tournament

My 2nd OTB Chess Tournament

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robert8867
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Here I would like to share my 2nd OTB chess tournament.

4 rounds of Swiss format, 45 minutes + 15 seconds increment per move. 

I played my 1st tournament back in March 2017 (the link provided below) and unfortunately 2 of my opponent (out of 3) never show up, in a 4-players per group format... I ended up playing 1 match and it was against a ~1400 rated player... Nothing much about it though

https://www.chess.com/blog/robert8867/my-1st-chess-tournament 

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But this year, January 2026, nearly after 9 years, I got back to tournaments... I joined as an unrated player... Got a BYE round in 1st round as I was the only unrated player and there were odd number of players in the tournament (21 players in total).

2nd Round I lost to a 1952 rated player, 3rd and 4th rounds I won against 1774 and 1781 rated players, respectively. Ended up in 6th place at the end and 1st place for U1800 rated players of the tournament. 

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This is Round 2: 

I believe I had some chances, but lack of experience, insufficient knowledge and understanding of the position led to losing the match... Not to mention that I didn't know the opening the White player played, and I tried to think and make the moves on the spot as best as I could... But luckily I never had any time trouble throughout the game and at the end he had around 2-3 minutes time advantage (12 minutes to 10 minutes) when I resigned. 

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This is Round 3: 

I guess I was a little bit lucky... He had miscalculations I guess... Perhaps my Ne2 (move 7) saved me.... I consider that as my golden move... 

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This is Round 4 (Final Round): 

I think again Ne2 (move 8) helped me a lot... I had about 15 minutes time advantage in this game... I lost 10 minutes of it on move 24. Rxe5, giving back an exchange as I didn't like his Knight in e5 and I preferred his Bishop in e5 than his Knight... 

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My Performance Elo in this tournament was 1969 and it has been assigned to me now as my rating!!   

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There will be another classic tournament coming up on 28th of Feb. If nothing pops up, perhaps I will join that too and will share my games.... In that one players will be sorted based on their ratings, then they will be divided into groups of 4 players, each player must play the other 3 players in his group. Somehow you will know your opponents and all players in a group have a similar/close ratings to each other...