Good job, man. "khurshie" sent over the pics from the tournament. looks like you did good!
My First Full Tournament - Great Success!
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Thank you both!
soldier: hahaha! great minds think alike, eh!?
Padman --- thank you for your analysis! I wish I would have seen that tactic on move 31! In addition, I had been considering Bxc5 on the 23rd move, but at the time I think I felt the Bishop was really strong compared to the Bishop (though in hindsight, yes, I believe it was a much better move). as for the one second on Rc8, he had spent a good 10-15 minutes calculating his move and I had already figured out that that was going to be my next move if he played his Queen there. Please do check back regularly! I would really like to hear your analysis on my remaining 3 matches!
There were mistakes, of course, but IMO you showed good technique in the games and understanding in the annotations. I was impressed 
Congrtas on a great first tourney.
Hey guys. Just tried uploading my third game for the second time, but I guess it won't fit on my first post :/ for the remaining three games, they will be posted as regular comments: not edits of a previous one. To make them easier to find, I will tell you all where to find them on my first post (page, post #, etc)
Jonathan: I have inserted a variation as you have suggested. will you please check it to make sure I have it correct? thanks. also, what were some of the unsound moves (if I don't have them marked already)? every bit helps!
Please correct me if I am mistaken, but would that not give me the same position as I get in the game, but a pawn down instead? In that case, should I edit the actual course of events?
In the variation 49.Kf3 isn't a ? move, white wins almost no matter what he does. 51.f4 can't be overlooked, creating a passer out of your majority.
thesugarfree007 wrote:
Please correct me if I am mistaken, but would that not give me the same position as I get in the game, but a pawn down instead? In that case, should I edit the actual course of events?
I noticed the same thing padman mentions when playing through your game. In a race to queen it's good practice (and sometimes vital ;) to be as fast as possible. Being down a pawn means nothing if you queen even 1 move faster than in the other variation. In this case you're 4-5 moves faster!
You asked for help with these positions, in this one what you do is use your pawn majority (3 vs 2) to make a passed pawn. That pawn either queens first (as in the game) or forces black's king to total passivity. Notice in king and pawn endgames, a bad king is like in a middlegame if YOUR WHOLE ARMY is bad 
Black can just resign :)
Hmm, it ate my other diagram, I'll try again:
Wafflemaster: thank you so much! I will be sure to remember those ideas for future matches... (and I will be sure to add your analysis to my games). once again, thanks for the help!
I believe that after 42 g4 the position should be drawn, as your pawns can't move. Down a pawn your opponent should still hold a draw with accurate play, but a rook trade just gave you an easy win. Your opponent should have should have simply kept his rook on f7 and tried to enter with his king as far as possible. If your king advances, he gives checks and f4 should be difficult to achieve. Moving the f pawn first would have been better, but your opponent should still hold a draw.
shepi13 wrote:
I believe that after 42 g4 the position should be drawn, as your pawns can't move. Down a pawn your opponent should still hold a draw with accurate play, but a rook trade just gave you an easy win. Your opponent should have should have simply kept his rook on f7 and tried to enter with his king as far as possible. If your king advances, he gives checks and f4 should be difficult to achieve. Moving the f pawn first would have been better, but your opponent should still hold a draw.
Maybe if a GM were playing black, but practically speaking white's king position and extra pawn give him very good chances IMO.
waffllemaster wrote:
shepi13 wrote:
I believe that after 42 g4 the position should be drawn, as your pawns can't move. Down a pawn your opponent should still hold a draw with accurate play, but a rook trade just gave you an easy win. Your opponent should have should have simply kept his rook on f7 and tried to enter with his king as far as possible. If your king advances, he gives checks and f4 should be difficult to achieve. Moving the f pawn first would have been better, but your opponent should still hold a draw.
Maybe if a GM were playing black, but practically speaking white's king position and extra pawn give him very good chances IMO.
I agree that it would have taken a GM to draw before he played g4, but I don't think the position is that bad for black afterwords. White will have difficulty breaking through even if black just waits, and with an active defense it should be a draw. Also, as Tarrasch (i think) said "Every rook ending is drawn". Even if white could manage to break through it is almost impossible to win R+P v R if the king doesn't somehow get cut off from the pawn by a file or two.
shepi13: that was actually what I was expecting. I was really surprised when he went for the trade. I guess maybe he thought I would blunder in the ending (I believe he was rated around 1400 and at the time I was rated 737 because I only played in half a tournament last year.)
Guys, I think it is a sign from the gods. I just tried posting my game FOR THE THIRD TIME and it simply won't accept my comment. So, I guess you all will just have my first two games to debate. Sorry!
shepi13 wrote:
waffllemaster wrote:
shepi13 wrote:
I believe that after 42 g4 the position should be drawn, as your pawns can't move. Down a pawn your opponent should still hold a draw with accurate play, but a rook trade just gave you an easy win. Your opponent should have should have simply kept his rook on f7 and tried to enter with his king as far as possible. If your king advances, he gives checks and f4 should be difficult to achieve. Moving the f pawn first would have been better, but your opponent should still hold a draw.
Maybe if a GM were playing black, but practically speaking white's king position and extra pawn give him very good chances IMO.
I agree that it would have taken a GM to draw before he played g4, but I don't think the position is that bad for black afterwords. White will have difficulty breaking through even if black just waits, and with an active defense it should be a draw. Also, as Tarrasch (i think) said "Every rook ending is drawn". Even if white could manage to break through it is almost impossible to win R+P v R if the king doesn't somehow get cut off from the pawn by a file or two.
The plus side of g4 is it fixes a weakness at h6. The backward f2 pawn is more or less meaningless... a middlegame theme that doesn't hold much weight here.
As for the rook and pawn games being drawn... I love that quote :) It has helped me win a few nice rook endgames in tournaments because my opponents seem to adopt this "anything will draw" attitude. Regardless of how drawish an endgame may be, endgames (any endgame) are terribly unforgiving. If anything you have to be on more alert here than at any other state of the game.
Find a drawn GM game with opposite bisohp and play it out vs houdini some time and when you lose (like I've done) you'll know it's true 
Anyway, here's some brief analysis. White tries to use his trumps (active king and rook) to work on making his b pawn a passer. I thought this would win pretty easily, but at least in this analysis white can't even spare a tempo.
Hello, everyone. I have just recently played my first full rated tournament (second tournament overall). I played third board for Varsity on my school team and it was a glorious success! I went undefeated and scored 4/5 (though I missed an easy opportunity to make it 4.5/5 [see Game 3]). I wanted to share my games with chess.com a) for analysis and b) because I wanted to thank everyone here for helping me get to this point. Over the past year, I prepared for this tournament by playing over 1200 games Live, reading the daily articles, viewing the Games of the Day, reading blogs and doing the Daily Puzzle.
At the tournament, the time controls were 90 minutes with 5 second delay.
Without further ado, I will begin showing my games with analysis: both of my games and how I was feeling off the board!
And so with that, I received my first tournament victory, in part thanks to some mistakes from my opponent. I played a good endgame and did myself proud. My butterflies were gone and I was ready for the next match (which was hands down my best performance of the tournament).
That match was without a doubt my best one in the tournament. I felt good, took my time and with that win felt confident about my chances in the remaining games.
I will post the remaining matches in a little bit... I look forward to reading your thoughts and analysis!