Apart from playing with a bad cold, I did enjoy the event, It wasn't as much fun as a normal OTB event, but it was still nice to play against people from other countries in some kind of official event.
There was some good camaraderie between the New Zealand players between rounds as we were in a Zoom breakout room.
The field was mostly juniors, the majority of whom are vastly underrated. Juniors improve so quickly that their rating tend to lag behind at the best of times, With not much rated chess being played due to the pandemic most were probably 200 to 400 rating points below their actual playing strength. And that's being conservative.
Most players seemed well versed in Opening theory, good at defending and weaker at endgames. TYpical of us 'amateurs!'
Still, a fun event, and a good learning experience.
