(In all the games, it shows the fide ratings which is why they appear so low)
Hi,
As I will be doing in this forum, I encourage you to also write forums about your own tournaments too which people may learn from. This tournament is a really difficult tournament (which if we won we would go to Kazakhstan to represent England at the international schools tournament). Our school had not won this tournament in 20 years, despite there being an IM as our board 1 once and much stronger players than us! In these forums, I will be covering each round rather than my games only for each board in our team:
Round 1
Board 1:
Of course, we really should not have taken it for granted but we were almost 100% confident our board 1 (a 2500 ecf and a 2350 fide) was going to win all his games. In the first round, he slaughtered his opponent, who once crushed me with a mating net hard to see. Anyways, here's what happened:
A very easy win against a very strong opponent! However, our board 2 did not have as much of an enjoyable game and lost (to another very strong opponent):
Board 2:
Yes, I know. There is an enormous difference in strengths between board 1 and board 2 for us, but that's just how it is. In fact, if you exclude the first 2 boards (or even include board 2 sometimes), the rest of us are almost the same strength. When our board 4 and I (board 6) play in tournaments, he often gets 0.5 less than me (and I often will win the tournament even if I draw or lose against him), and I have beaten the board 3 in the only game we've ever played (and I am also currently stronger than our board 5). Anyways, I will stop rambling on and continue:
Ok, honestly, not too much happened in this game. In short, there was a fortress at the very end which forced the draw:
Well, neither side were actually ever winning in that game so a draw was going to happen. However, as you will see by the end of this round, every point mattered.
Board 3
Our board 3 has a very big tendency to play very quickly during the game (as he blitzes out the opening). However, this was not actually a true standard time control (1 min less and it is considered rapid) with a time of 50mins + 10 seconds, and he time trouble to his advantage:
Well, I remember seeing this game slightly earlier on, seeing that he had activated his Knights, but I hardly believed he would win it. However, a win is still a win (and all points were critical).
Board 4
He had a very unfortunate game and generally had a horrible day then. In fact, the way he lost this was actually through a very nasty blindspot (these are when you are unable to see very simple things you normally always see, such as a Knight move, or a Bishop diagonal). He got into time trouble near the very end and hence lost the game as these are when blindspots become very prominent:
He was very depressed after the game so I did puzzles with him to cheer him up a little. He was still solving some very tough puzzles in 30 seconds! Well, I guess he would have a different way of getting rid of blindspots then.
Game 5
Our board 5 had stopped chess. Of course, he can (and he has been doing very well in cricket), but he essentially stopped playing chess (for 5 months until this tournament) and used to always lose games or draw them. So it was not too surprising to see him (next to me!) lose a Bishops of opposite colour endgame:
Not the greatest game. As you will see (a common trend), he was winning at one point but just threw the win away. However, this is probably because he hadn't played any chess in 5 months (and he actually did very well keeping that in mind). And finally, my game.
Board 6:
In this game, I got a lost position from the very start. Yes, it was "human" lost (+2), but my opponent simply didn't realise they could take my pawn. However, the rest of the game was ok, but I still played slightly worse versions of some winning variations:
That was generally a very lucky game. If he had noticed, perhaps I would've lost the game and we would've lost the match. I decided to try harder for the rest of the games that day to not lose in the opening
Overall Score
We won that match 3.5 : 2.5. It was too close and we were unsure about whether we could really have any chance. However, I felt that we still could win it, even if we scraped every win. We learned later other schools had wiped out others 6-0 but it was ok, because it was all about the match points, not individual points.
(In all the games, it shows the fide ratings which is why they appear so low)
Hi,
As I will be doing in this forum, I encourage you to also write forums about your own tournaments too which people may learn from. This tournament is a really difficult tournament (which if we won we would go to Kazakhstan to represent England at the international schools tournament). Our school had not won this tournament in 20 years, despite there being an IM as our board 1 once and much stronger players than us! In these forums, I will be covering each round rather than my games only for each board in our team:
Round 1
Board 1:
Of course, we really should not have taken it for granted but we were almost 100% confident our board 1 (a 2500 ecf and a 2350 fide) was going to win all his games. In the first round, he slaughtered his opponent, who once crushed me with a mating net hard to see. Anyways, here's what happened:
A very easy win against a very strong opponent! However, our board 2 did not have as much of an enjoyable game and lost (to another very strong opponent):
Board 2:
Yes, I know. There is an enormous difference in strengths between board 1 and board 2 for us, but that's just how it is. In fact, if you exclude the first 2 boards (or even include board 2 sometimes), the rest of us are almost the same strength. When our board 4 and I (board 6) play in tournaments, he often gets 0.5 less than me (and I often will win the tournament even if I draw or lose against him), and I have beaten the board 3 in the only game we've ever played (and I am also currently stronger than our board 5). Anyways, I will stop rambling on and continue:
Ok, honestly, not too much happened in this game. In short, there was a fortress at the very end which forced the draw:
Well, neither side were actually ever winning in that game so a draw was going to happen. However, as you will see by the end of this round, every point mattered.
Board 3
Our board 3 has a very big tendency to play very quickly during the game (as he blitzes out the opening). However, this was not actually a true standard time control (1 min less and it is considered rapid) with a time of 50mins + 10 seconds, and he time trouble to his advantage:
Well, I remember seeing this game slightly earlier on, seeing that he had activated his Knights, but I hardly believed he would win it. However, a win is still a win (and all points were critical).
Board 4
He had a very unfortunate game and generally had a horrible day then. In fact, the way he lost this was actually through a very nasty blindspot (these are when you are unable to see very simple things you normally always see, such as a Knight move, or a Bishop diagonal). He got into time trouble near the very end and hence lost the game as these are when blindspots become very prominent:
He was very depressed after the game so I did puzzles with him to cheer him up a little. He was still solving some very tough puzzles in 30 seconds! Well, I guess he would have a different way of getting rid of blindspots then.
Game 5
Our board 5 had stopped chess. Of course, he can (and he has been doing very well in cricket), but he essentially stopped playing chess (for 5 months until this tournament) and used to always lose games or draw them. So it was not too surprising to see him (next to me!) lose a Bishops of opposite colour endgame:
Not the greatest game. As you will see (a common trend), he was winning at one point but just threw the win away. However, this is probably because he hadn't played any chess in 5 months (and he actually did very well keeping that in mind). And finally, my game.
Board 6:
In this game, I got a lost position from the very start. Yes, it was "human" lost (+2), but my opponent simply didn't realise they could take my pawn. However, the rest of the game was ok, but I still played slightly worse versions of some winning variations:
That was generally a very lucky game. If he had noticed, perhaps I would've lost the game and we would've lost the match. I decided to try harder for the rest of the games that day to not lose in the opening
Overall Score
We won that match 3.5 : 2.5. It was too close and we were unsure about whether we could really have any chance. However, I felt that we still could win it, even if we scraped every win. We learned later other schools had wiped out others 6-0 but it was ok, because it was all about the match points, not individual points.