What to expect in an OTB tournament

Clock hasn't been a problem. I play a little too fast for the really slow time controls on the internet. I try to play 45 45 but it ends up more like 30 30. The natural pace OTB seems much slower and it's easier to take my time.

I *thought* I had the notation just fine, but when I got back to the hotel last night and tried to recreate my games on the computer, I found that many moves were clearly wrong and couldn't figure out the right ones on all of them.

I will absolutely, definitely be doing this again. It'd be testing my wife's indulgence to try another large, out-of-town, weekend-long tournament again, but there are some smaller one-nighters in the area in January. I can probably do a really big tournament once or twice a year.

 congrats!

Btw maybe its better to say 6 year old girl or 8 year old boy etc.. rather then "indian" "black", I dont know it just sounds weird when your putting that in your sentence.

I have loved watching this forum topic and find it very inspiring. I am so envious and want to play OTB in a tournament -now!

I don't think my wife understands my obsession so I am glad you got away for the weekend.

 Teach her how to play.

Okay, all done, 2.5/6. Won my fifth-round game as posted in the game showcase. In the sixth round, I was fortunate enough to play white for the fourth time. I played the opening very well and had him bent back into a very awkward position as black. I had a very strong kingside attack going and was up a pawn, and when I had a chance to simplify down I instead chose a riskier path and kept going with the attack, trying for a spectacular (by my standards) mate. Then, and as soon as I released the piece I knew it, I blundered just as badly as my fourth-round opponent had and completely gave him the game (I moved my queen into a pawn fork with my rook on the fifth rank)

Estimated rating based on USCF website calculator: 1050, within the range I expected but a little on the low side.

There is a definite difference between the way people play online and over the board. I went into the tournament at about ICC 1400 standard, and I think the standard formula of ICC-250=USCF is about accurate for this level. I could have played a little better, but the newness of the experience and the sheer length of the tournament (and my recent bout of insomnia) hurt me a bit. 

The play is very different from the internet, at least in my six games. On the internet, people are very likely to overlook your attacks. If you can put together a nice threat with multiple pieces working together, and there's only one move that can stop it, they'll often overlook that one move in favor of whatever threat they are trying to generate. My opponents found that one move every time. But they (and I) were much more likely to blunder themselves into a simple tactic than similarly rated players at a higher level. In 6 games, I counted five blunders that moved right into a fairly simple tactic that cost at least the exchange (and four of the five dropped an entire piece). Two of them swung easily won games into sure losses. I think I'm going to put away my positional book and stop worrying about more advanced stuff until I can *really* make it through entire games without making silly mistakes.

The swing from a good tournament to a bad one hangs on a razor-thin edge. If I were slower to accept a draw in the first game, not miscounted the king's moves by 1 in the third game, and not blundered into the fork in the sixth game, I would have scored 4.5/6. If my opponent doesn't blunder her queen into a skewer in the fourth game and my opponent defends a little more accurately in the fifth game, I could have easily been 1.0/6. How many bad moves does it take to lose a chess game? Just one, the old saying goes.

I was expecting a lot of kids and a lot of nerdy guys my age, but it was actually a very diverse group.  The kids were very concerned with ratings and prize money going into the last round, asking everybody around them and figuring it out in their heads. It was cute.

I think I totaled up about 11 hours of playing time across two days, which is to be honest very mentally exhausting. I hope in time I can be more ready for that aspect of it.

I think I'm about out of thoughts for the moment. Sorry for spamming the board :)

I don't see how you're spamming the board. I was thinking myself, that the newness of the experience would be bound to affect your performance.

But I already know all the basics and I want to read some more advanced thoughts from grandmasters!

*remembers he's about 6 hours removed from leaving his rook and queen to be pawn-forked*

Never mind. Back to basics it is!

11 hours over 6 games, including one that was over in 15 minutes, is a *ton* for me. I'm of the internet generation, where 15 minutes is a long time. On the net, I usually have trouble thinking more than about 90 seconds for most non-opening moves. Maybe stretch it to five minutes if it's complicated or I'm really confused.

The first three rounds were G/60 with a 5-second increment, and I felt like 2-3 minutes per move was about the most I could afford. The last three rounds were G/115 with a 5-second increment, and there I was averaging maybe 3 minutes per non-opening move, with the longest being about 12 minutes (excluding the 20 minutes I sat there and tried to figure out a way to magic my way out of that pawn fork).

I did kind of run out of mental steam about 90 minutes or so into each game. I was going through a very careful move process early in the games (the old checks/captures/threats for him, checks captures threats for me, checks captures checks he could respond with), but by the the late middlegames I was telling myself "no need to think, this is the only plausible reply" way too often.

In almost 4 decades of otb tourney play my longest otb games involved adjournments , one in the USA and one in an event in Germany. These games lasted about 8 hours total but are certainly exceptions. The majority of my otb tourney games are decided in 4-5 hours . In the last decade its extremely rare for any of my otb games to last more than 5 hours.

Its very difficult to play otb tournament chess if you dont have an understanding wife !  I know this from my own experience as well as the experiences of many other married men who were addicted to chess.

 True, but the most likely explanation is that the father was recording the game using the laptop, not trusting that his son's scoresheet would be adequate to recreate the game afterwards.  Still, you would be right to be at least a little bit suspicious.  Even if the laptop were not being used for game analysis I would suspect a little bit of "coaching" might be going on during breaks, which would also be cheating.  The presence of the laptop just increases the suspicion level.

It certainly wouldn't be unreasonable to call it to a TD's attention.

I never thought about the coaching problem when playing against kids, but that's because I never play in long tournaments.  I usually play in G30, and never more than G60, events, where it is rare for a player to get up and leave during the game.  I'll bet a lot of parents do offer advice during breaks in such long games.

There was a small snag with the ratings crosstables (the two-day pool for the first three games was being double-counted), but that's resolved and I now have my official rating: 1086(P6).

My ICC standard rating was at 140X (i can't recall the last digit) going into the tournament, had recently been as high as 1565 but that was probably a fluke run. The standard formula I've read is ICC standard-250 = USCF for most intermediate players, and that was within 100 points for me, so not too shabby.

First goal: 1100.

I know. I figure for a six-game stretch like that, the rating swing is probably something like +/- 350 with 95% confidence (just a WAG). But it's still something to shoot for.

By my math, one avoided mega blunder by my opponent and I would have scored 1.5 for a performance rating of about 900, and one avoided megablunder by me and one correctly played king-pawn endgame would have made 4.0 and a 1350ish performance rating.

But a goal's a goal :)

Edit: Plugged in opponents into ratings estimator on USCF site.

No blunder K+R+3P endgame that should have been drawn, plus win game up pawn when I had a chance to simplify endgame = 1297

Opponent wins instead of blundering queen into skewer when I'm down three pawns in the late middlegame = 945

So yeah, it fluctuates wildly. But we wouldn't be chessplayers if we didn't obsess over ratings.

Glad to see you enjoyed the OTB experience. I haven't played in one in some time, but after reading about yours, I may start again