Marshall Sunday Beginner/Unrated (U1200) Recap

Today I played in another Marshall Chess Club "Sunday Beginner/Unrated Open" - basically an U1200 tournament. Next week I'm headed to the Eastern Chess Congress in Princeton, New Jersey (Oct 28 - 30), so I decided to enter this tournament as a "warm up." Although, as we shall see in this recap, I probably should keep exclusively playing in these beginner tournaments until I start playing better moves and winning more consistently.

Game 1 vs Shlachter

I played the Nimzo-Indian pretty well and reached this critical position:

I was sure that 11. ...d6 was a blunder... but after the game I found that it was actually the top engine move... in fact, the only correct move.

My shortcoming was I didn't see the follow up: 13. ...e5 which would have shut down white's dark-square bishop and given me breathing room to finish development.

Under time pressure, I blundered my queen and went on to lose.

Game 2 vs. Sims

I was pretty happy that I finally got to play the Scotch as white. After Awonder Liang took down Levon Aronian, I've been looking at the Scotch Gambit as a potential opening, because it often leads to the open, tactical games that I enjoy.

However, my opponent did not capture with exd4, instead opting for a closed game. Instead of clearing the center of pawns and launching an attack with superior development, I conceded to a more closed, maneuvering game (ugh).

Ultimately with time pressure (less than 5 minutes on the clock) I had to stop taking notation, but I managed to get my opponent in a mating net and deliver checkmate. I was not happy with the game however and know that I won only because my opponent made quite a few dubious moves and pawn captures.

One bright spot was my h4 pawn push on move 6 was engine-approved.

Game 3 vs Tsao

Somewhat frazzled from my past two games, I resolved to play the French Defense as black. Typically this leads to a slower, more solid game for me with fewer tactics. Unfortunately, my opponent played the Exchange Variation, and things got fairly "spicy" fast.

As with my earlier loss, a key tactic in this game was White's queen capturing a unguarded pawn on d5. I need to watch for tactics against my King on these key squares. (On the subject of tactics and board vision: I got a copy of Rapid Chess Improvement by Michael de la Maza - perhaps the subject of future posts).

In any case, things were going ... ok, until I blundered with 20. ... Nf4?? - seemed like a good idea at the time! Put your knights in the center? In fact, the engine rates this a game-losing blunder, white is +8 after this lemon.

(Side note: Is it me or are scholastic players very often significantly underrated? These 800 - 900 players were playing worse than the 1200-rated fellow ALTO player I beat a few weeks ago).

Conclusion

Next week, I play in the Eastern Chess Conference. I had signed up for the U1500 section, but after today's performance I decided that U1300 was more appropriate and emailed the tournament director to make the switch.

If you're reading this and you're at the ECC next week, be sure to say hi!