Triumph at Thornhill

Just days after my Week of Chess, in which I played in the Maritime Chess Club's CFC Rapid (October 6) and Cash Blitz (October 7) events, as well as the Maritime Chess Festival's Rapid Championship (October 10) and Open Championship (October 11-13), I came across the website of the Thornhill Chess Club, run by Shon Lazarev (@shlo).

Conveniently enough for me, they had a CFC Rapid tournament scheduled to take place just 30 hours later, right here on Lichess. I checked my schedule to make sure I could participate, and registered for the tournament. I'm eager to get more CFC-rated games under my belt, to get a more accurate rating and, hopefully, see signs of improvement as I continue to take my chess learning more seriously.

Making my debut in the Thornhill Chess Club arena, I had no idea what to expect from this tournament. With a different organizer and, presumably, a different player base, I didn't even know what kind of playing strength I might be up against. See, I normally play for the Maritime Chess Club (MCC), whose most prestigious tournaments attract the attention of several master-level players, with International Master Sergey Klimenko being an ever-present force, ready to thwart anyone else's hopes of winning the tournament.

The Macro-Chess/Micro-Chess Battle

Ultimately, this tournament ended up being smaller than those of the MCC. Only four players (including myself) had registered, and to my surprise, I was the number one seed. I suddenly felt the pressure of my own expectation to go out and win.

As the top seed, this is your tournament to lose.

That was my inner dialogue just an hour or two before the tournament. However, I don't think this is a healthy mindset. Winning a chess game isn't about the ratings of the players. Winning a chess game, or just being good at chess in general, demands that we focus on the position. A winning rook and pawn endgame is objectively winning regardless of whether you're playing your 2-year-old nephew or Magnus Carlsen.

ChatGPT offered me some advice using terminology I've come to embrace:

"Stop playing macro-chess (assessing the players) and focus on playing micro-chess (the actual position at hand)."

Macro-chess versus micro-chess. I like it. I think a lot of us fall into the macro-chess trap all too often. We compare ratings, openings, past histories against opponents we've faced several times, and we unsettle ourselves.

The Toughest Test

As the tournament began, only three of the four players were on time, and therefore the lowest seed received a 1-point bye. That meant that I would be squaring off against the number two seed, Richardson Grenon, with the black pieces. Not the easiest start.

The time control was 10'+5", which is longer than what I have come to typically play online (more Blitz than Rapid nowadays), but shorter than what I had just played at the Maritime Chess Festival. I switched my board view to 3D so it looked more like a classical OTB game than an online blitz game. This was to help prevent my brain from autopiloting moves without careful calculation as a result of being in "blitz mode."

My methods worked. While I did start to feel the time pressure when my clock dipped below two minutes, I was in an advantageous endgame, and ultimately came out on top.

Seizing Control

I had the white pieces in the remaining two games. I had played Fowlie, the number three seed, on a few occasions in MCC tournaments in the past, and he's put up a tough fight on more than one occasion. Fortunately for me, though, last night I reached a winning rook endgame and successfully converted my advantage into a full point.

The number four seed, Savoie Therriault, had arrived in time for Round 2, and lost his game to Richardson Grenon. That meant that after Round 2, I had 2.0 points, Fowlie and Richardson Grenon each had 1.0, and Savoie Therriault had 0.5 as a result of a half-point bye in Round 1.

So, I needed just a draw against Savoie Therriault and the tournament would be mine.

The Cherry on Top

And so it was. 24 moves into the game, my opponent resigned, thereby giving me a perfect 3.0/3 score for the tournament.

This was the first time, after five previous attempts, that I managed to score more than 2.5 points in a CFC-rated event, despite playing fewer games in this tournament (3 games) compared to all other CFC-rated events (4-6 games) of which I've been a part.

I would like to thank Shon Lazarev (@shlo) for organizing the tournament, and I look forward to participating in more such tournaments in the future.

Until then, though, we set our sights once again on the MCC's CFC Rapid tournament in December.