2v2 Tourny CCSCSL - Back to OTB!

After a long month without getting to the Chess Club and Scholastic Center Saint Louis, CCSCSL, Saturday the club hosted it's first 2v2 Club Championship. My chess buddy Dan had some family stuff to take care of but I showed up anyway hoping another player would show up in need of a partner. 

Lucky for me, not so luck for him, I teamed up with a sharp young player William Tong, rated 1800+ with my lowly 1147 rating we we're trapped in the competitive 2400-3100 bracket and wound up getting to play to an expert and a master in the first round! "Double T" was our team name "Tong/Trani" 

Board 1! Ouch, I got crush by Bob Holliman, 2200 USCF. He told me after the game, I pretty much lost in the 5 or 6th move of the opening a French/Steiner variation. 1. e4 e6 2. c4, ugly game, he won with no difficulty and I may as well have resigned after the 10th move as I had no play. But I learned some stuff. 

William pulled off the upset of the tournament defeating former Missouri State Champion Ron Luther. He's got skills. 

Anyway, the event was fun and I enjoyed analyzing my games over coffee Sunday morning. I took 2 points and our team finished with 4. I lost to a 2200 and 1700+ player and defeated two guys at the bottom of the pack. 

Here's the 3 games I was analyzing this morning. Gotta get better at my French and the two games I did win have a lot of errors and my opponents could have thwarted the winning attacks with some simple moves. 

Enjoy! 

Getting stomped by William N. Analysis showed the c4 push wasn't terrible, and if I had of waited 2 more moves the I could've traded just 1 knight for the Rook/pawn. Basically I failed and sac'd 2 knights for a rook pawn and Williams powerful black bishop pinned my king. Terrible play by Sean and a relatively easy win for William who recently earned a spot in the annual CCSCSL Club Championship. The game actually ended in mate, but I screwed up my notation.

Round 3 was against a young scholastic player in his first "adult" tournament. I'm sure in a couple of months he'll be destroying me, so it was good to get a win in against him while he's young.