most epic moment in a tournament

in a chess tournament we can expierence our highs and lows. our epic sucesses and failures. my most epic moment in a tournament was when i won 3rd place in my 3rd tournament after performing a 4 move checkmate what was your epic moment in a tournament?

I once beat someone who was ranked two classes above me in 20 moves and his queenside never moved.

I had an expert on the ropes and missed a draw at the end.

On the table I was at which has three games, two of them were Grobs.

Bleh, I would want to puke if I won that easily.

I played out a KID where I ended up with an extra pawn but a bad bishop.  My first mistake was moving my king to my passed pawn despite not being able to defend it (I should have just used the tempo to move my king somewhere better).  So my extra pawn went down.  Then my bishop couldn't get out in time, and i lost another pawn.  Then another one, and my bishop couldn't do anything.  I tipped over my king and stormed out of the tournament hall, it was the one time I really lost my composure when playing chess since I was a child.

So epic failure for me.  It changed my playstyle to only like openings where all my pieces were used, even at the cost of passivity (still don't play gambits much).  I also started making sure my pawns were locked on the right squares for the endgame.

I once won a game playing the last 15 moves with only 10 seconds left to my opponents 30 minutes.

Heh, just to throw out a story -- I was watching an expert and an A class player do a post mortem.  Their board was right next to a game that was still going between two stronger masters, 2300-2400 type.  During the post mortem both masters glanced over to see what was going on, not moving their heads or anything, just diverting their eyes for a brief moment.

So on they go with the post mortem until one player evidently makes a mistake, one master reaches over and shows a better move... oh ok this is a good one they agree, then the other master reaches over and makes one for the other side like oh yeah well what about that?  Both masters pause a moment, then nod their heads and go back to playing their game.  I thought it was very funny.

Sometime in the 1980s I was playing in a 4 round open tournament in Santa Barbara California. I won my first game against an expert, no big deal I was rated as a low master, maybe 2210. In my next two games I played IMs, drawing both ending up with 2 points. A draw in my last game would give me $$ and a lot of pride. My last round game was with another IM who proceeded to destroy me in less than 26 moves with Black. I ended up out of the money, with only memories. All the IMs made a few $$ to make their weekend worthwhile. Oh well, it was a fun tournament anyway and Santa Barbara was a great place to play.

Great stories tony and orangehonda.

Orange, I thought that would be considered cheating, but I guess since they both helped it evened out and no one cared?

@mnag at least you beat a master and drawed two IMs :). Question tho, why is it that you have never played a single game on chess.com?

I'm basically an OTB player, never interested in playing internet chess.

And how do you practice when there isn't someone to play OTB?

After a game is over (if the players are on good terms anyway) you can do a post mortem, no it has nothing to do with dead bodies as the name might suggest , it's just after a game is finished the two players can pick each other's brains about the unplayed ideas and variations.  So the two players had finished their game and were just reviewing it when the masters leaned over to make a move. 

If one of the players had leaned over to make a move for an ongoing game, that would be outrageous

Ok I might have a story.  My game was over and went to check on a club-mate who I rode up to the tournament with.  Looking at the board I decided my friend was much better, probably winning.  He almost made a poor move, but before letting go of the piece he said, oh that loses I can't do that, and casually put the piece back.  His opponent suggested a different move and my friend agreed it was better.  They both talked a bit more about the position, and when they paused I joined in.  I made a few moves along the lines of what they were suggesting and threw out an evaluation... when my friend's opponent politely tells me that the game is still going on!  Because of the touch move rule, the poor move I saw in the beginning meant a forced mate in 2, so both players started chatting a bit, but I made moves on someone else's board during an ongoing game hehe

They reset the position, played a few moves, and my firend resigned before being mated.

Practice? I never practice in OTB, I study to play OTB. At one time I played a great deal of blitz but decided it was counterproductive. If I need a daily fix of chess, I take out a book and study or read about chess. Even better I read a history book or novel.

lol, that's great mind game stuff.  Someone who has to gloat out loud like that probably couldn't handle the pressure :p  I wonder how good the unrated guy was, you should look him up and let us know

@orange, I thought the guys doing the post-mortem suggested moves to the guys that were 2300 etc still playing the game. But I think you meant that the guys still playing an ongoing game made suggestions to the post-mortem analysis guys.

@Anthony, Why would an expert lose to an unrated ? or 995 rated? guy? And how can one finish a whole game in 4 seconds, not even a GM can do that. If the guy is unrated, what is 995 "P"? If the guy is 995"P" why did you say he's unrated? And then go on to beat an expert class player, with the weak Borg Defense opening...

Sorry but I don't believe your story at all.

A GM could do that easily vs an expert... really easily.  Extra time only gives you so much advantage.  Me with two hours vs a GM with 1 minute for example, the GM would win 10 out of 10 games (no time delay or add on, just 60 seconds).

Unrated isn't a real rating... it's like a question mark, you don't know how good the guy is.  Why was it 900?  Some guys like to sandbag, and some have low provisional ratings from when they were kids.  A guy moved to my area from another country a year ago and had no rating, after 25 games his first established rating was in the high 2100s, he studied chess as a kid for 5-6 some years before moving here.

Oh I see, you didn't read the part about the 2 second delay, nvm my answer then :p

well heh heh this was pretty funny 3 years ago while i was in my 2nd tourney i beat this guy with a 1500 rating and at the time is was at 900  rating and in the final round i beat him to win second place but it turned out the pieces were on the wrong side of the board! so we had to restart the game and he beat me so i ended up in third so remember folks check the board before playing so you dont make my mistake haha! by the way orangehonda you're correct about that mind game stuff i've seen players get beat because of that. pride always comes before a fall thats how some of my old friends played with that pride and that always cost them a win.

 Ive had a few of those.... during game/30 tournys.

I've never actually played "competition" before. None of the players I play at any of my tournaments are any good.

My 9-year-old stepdaughter beat a kid two years older than her with Scholar's Mate ;-)  I was in the skittles room and she went off to play and came back after a few minutes and I said "what happened?!?" and she said "four move checkmate".

I think the other kid was already at an age when no one tried that anymore and so he wasn't expecting it.  And rightly so...we had a chat about how she really needs to have a different opening ;-)