OTB - how to get started?

So, I'm currently playing in the Greater Midwest Class Championships in Shaumburg - my first OTB tourney since the Illinois Open back in August.  After my disappointing performance last time I've gone in for the U1400 section, as I want to build my OTB experience and hopefully try to boost my rating above 1000.  I played 3 games yesterday and there are 2 more today.  So far it's going very well indeed - I've won 3/3.  This time I knew what to expect and I've been more relaxed and playing much better.  Games 2 and 3 were probably 2 of the best live games I've ever played - I'll post game 2 here for now, but I'll post more later :-)

It was a very intense and hard-fought game.  In the end, with my position starting to fall apart, I decided to sacrifice a Knight for an all-out attack on his King, which ended up earning me the full point:

Ok, I'll post that one later too :-)

Well done T4T - good luck in your remaining games

Thanks hicetnunc! I've already done much better than last time, so there's not really any pressure :-)

Nice game!

Well done! For future use, the best plan in these Be2 Scheveningen positions is usually f4, g4, g5, etc.

Thanks for the advice MainlineNovelty. It would definitely be worth studying this variation a bit more, since it can come about by 2 different move orders. Sounds a bit theoretical though. What's the basic plan? Is it similar to the Keres attack? Presumably White is trying to force the Knight off of f6 and pawn storm to break through to the Black King?

Congrats on your games :) by the way, the tournament was 90 m/30 sec increment which means you need to always take notation, if your opponent called you out on it you wouldeve lost time, in which case you probably wouldeve lost. So for the future, remember to always take notation in 90/30 games :)

Well, at the end of the tourney I finished off with 4 wins out of 5 and came joint 2nd in the U1400 group with 4 other people, which is awesome. I don't think it could have gone much better and I feel that I've made up for the thrashing I got last time. Hopefully my rating will go up a bit now and next time I'll probably try to play up and face some of the 1500-1600s. Although, given how solid the opposition seems to be at 1100-1200, it's hard to imagine what they will be like.

I think I played some pretty decent chess this time and I had fun too, which is the main thing. The one game I lost was to a guy that beat me last time - Joseph Bulkis. It was an extremely tight game and I think I had a better position for most of it, but I misjudged a trade down to a King and Pawn endgame and he got me. I will post that one and a couple of the other games I won when I have a bit of time over the next couple of days.

@Trapper4: actually I was doing the 2-day schedule and the first 2 games were 45/d5, so I don't believe I had to take notation once my clock was below 5 mins. Were you playing? How did you do?

Wow thats great! 4/5 is really good. Congrats on second! Oh, ok. Good point-I forgot about the 2 day. Yeah, I ended up with 3 points although i drew and lost to 3 people below me. :/

I really enjoyed reading this post.    At the ripe age of 36 I started playing at a local club a halfway through the year and had my first OTB tourney about two months back.  My club consists of players rated 1400 and up.  I was facing off against 1700+ players every week, not winning a single game.  But the learning experience was good for me.  Or so I thought! 

Going into my first OTB tourney was so nervous I could hardly concentrate.  I lost almost every single game (after getting some good positions in most of the games against decent opposition).  I also did not expect the 1200-1300 players to be as tough as what they were.    It was a true eye-opener as to where exactly I stood in the food chain.   

I even considered quitting chess altogether but that only lasted for a day. 

I played my second tourney over the weekend and I managed to get a score of 3 out of 5.  Much better than the first and thankfully (unlike the previous tournament) I managed to convert my advantages. 

One of the biggest challenges for me at present is the fact that these kids seem to play so quickly!  I keep finding myself in time pressure with them! 

I wish you the very best of luck with your chess and I will revisit this thread to see how you progress. 

Hey congrats thats a really good result. I also live in the chicagoland area and I second what a few other people have said about chess iq being a great place to play tournaments on the weekend. 

On another note, I wish I had seen this thread earlier I could have told you that the main problem you were going to have transitioning from online to otb is calculation. Almost every single game is won based on calculation until you get to 1800 at least, so its very important. Coming from online where you have unlimited time to make sure you arent making any calc errors, and you have that analysis board where you can literally move the pieces on the board it is going to be a tough transition. Try never to move the pieces except in your head if you want to improve at otb play. Using that analysis board on correspondance chess is basically death to your otb game because it severely cripples your calculation skills. I would also spend some time doing tactics trainer to work on calculation some more. 

Another congratulations on the great result! 

I second what Zacer just said.  I spoke to a couple of 1800's and 1900's at both these tourneys, asking them what they do to improve and win games.  And their answers were unanimous: Tactics, Tactics and Calculation training.  And they simply keep "chess fit" by playing a lot during the year.  

I specifically asked all of them about opening study as this seems to be the number one illusion amongst many players that studying opening theory will help them understand chess, and each and every one of these players gave the exact same answer: They don't bother study openings much at all as most of their games are decided by some calculated line or tactic.   This came as a great relief to me as I do not particularly enjoy opening study. 

Thanks for the encouragement guys - I really appreciate it!  I want to reply to all your posts but can't right now 'cause I have to go to work.  Later on I will post another couple of my games and post some better responses.  I definitely agree with you TJBChess, that coming to these OTB tourneys has been really eye-opening as to where I stand in the food chain.  These 1100-1200 rated kids are playing a level of Chess that is probably equivalent to around 1800 in Chess.com online correspondence and probably better than most Live opponents I've faced on here.  They play quick, calculate well, know a ton about openings, endgames, everything.  I had to dig really deep and play some of the best chess I've ever played to beat them this weekend (plus getting lucky in a couple of games, like the one above)  :-)

Not to criticize Chess.com, but it seems to me that OTB tourneys are really where the best chess is being played and I need to get more of it if I want to improve faster.

So, going back to that Scheveningen game, if Black can transpose an Opocensky Najdorf into a Classical Scheveningen, then is there any decent way for White to force a more positional game vs the Najdorf? I'm starting to understand better how the a6 there is such a good waiting move - the option of e5 or e6 makes it a tricky, amorphous blob to play against. And then in the Scheveningen, Black still has the option of playing e5 or d5 at any point! If I'm going to play the open Sicilian I might have to reconsider my approach to these variations.

Ok, here's my first-round game.  I was on the White side of a Panov-Botvinnik attack.  My opponent played fairly solid at first, but then I snatched a pawn with a tactic in the late middlegame and he seemed happy to trade down to an endgame where I had a decisive advantage:

Hey nice game it looks like you played a lot better in this tournament than the last one. I would strongly recommend analyzing your game without using a computer. It is much more helpful to try to figure out your mistakes on your own. For example you wrote 14. Re1?! and then "Nxc6 was probably better". If I asked you right now why is Nxc6 better than Re1 would you be able to answer me? 

Thanks for your comments Zacer - yeah, this is much more like I would normally play.  I don't usually hang material and miss simple tactics the way I was in the last tourney!  :-)

I do always analyze it myself first, but then I go over it with the engine after to see how accurate my calculation is and if I can find anything else.  Maybe I should spend a bit longer on the self-analysis part though.  I have to admit I'm not really clear on why 14. Nxc6 might have been better.  Maybe if I can keep his pawns on light squares on both sides of the board then I can use my Bishop to attack them and force his Knights into defence in the endgame?

Yes, I know what you mean TJBChess.  It seems that sometimes they play so fast that it deprives you of the ability to think on their time as well as your own.  Although I think the flipside of that is that they are probably playing below their actual rating by playing ahead of the time control and maybe they are a bit more prone to making mistakes.  This time I focused on using that extra time to formulate a strong plan and try to achieve a better position in the middlegame, which I think generally worked.  In the round 5 game (not posted it yet) I had a winning endgame position with 5 minutes left on my clock and he had 40.  But, 5 minutes with 30 second increment is still plenty to finish off a won endgame, so there wasn't really any time pressure.