And now the loss

Some time ago, I posted a my analysis of four games from a tournament I played in mid-June. Attentive readers may have wondered, what about game five? Tied for second with 3/4 going into the final round, I had a chance to tie for first if I won and the first-place player lost. The player in first lost, but so did I. There were a few reasons for this loss: fatigue (two long games a day is tiring), inadequate opening preparation, and muddled thinking. Although the blows that brought me down were tactical, I exposed myself to them as a result of poor positional decisions.

Tournament recap. Overall, I played well (and even gained 8 rating points). Still, my play had important shortcomings. My board visualization was not as good as I would like it to be. On more than one occasion (see games 1 and 5), I mis-read possibilities because I did not calculate until the position was quiescent. Tactically, there were no enormous blunders until game 5 when I lost the exchange in the midst of a difficult defense. But there were some important tactical oversights, notably my missing the defensive use of pins in games 3 and 5. Time trouble was a big factor in games three, four, and five. Because of it, I missed winning chances in game four and made weak 40th moves In both games three and five. Finally, there is opening preparation. My preparation against the Sicilian was inadequate. In sum, there is a lot of room for improvement.

For the other games, see the previous posts

http://blog.chess.com/sputnick/the-importance-of-the-importance-of-calculation-visualization-and-the-thinking-process

http://blog.chess.com/sputnick/punishing-an-opening-error-and-time-management

http://blog.chess.com/sputnick/amateur-opening-analysis

http://blog.chess.com/sputnick/my-best-game-of-the-tournament