Marshall U1800 G50 Recap

Yesterday I played in a Marshall Saturday G50 U1800 tournament. Four round swiss system with G45/d5 time controls. They hold these every Saturday and Sunday - they are a great opportunity to play tournament chess in a classic setting.

This time around I scored 2.0 / 4. Much better than my previous two events, which I can attribute to (mostly) being careful in the opening and not throwing my pieces away. In two games I even navigated some hairy middle games to at least having a chance in the endgames.

Clearly, I need to work on my endgame fundamentals if I want to score in OTB slow chess (but I already knew this). And also practice more tactics under time pressure.

Game 1 vs Lee

After starting with the Petroff (Russian Game), which I prefer along with the French Defense to avoid early "fried liver" and "wayward queen" nonsense, we transposed to the Four Knights "fork trick." However, my continuation of 8. ... f5?! was essentially game-losing as I had not yet castled. I thought I had remembered this move from opening preparation, but principals need to outweigh such misguided ideas every time.

Castle first!

In this game I made my first ever draw offer - completely vindicated by the engine analysis of 0.0 - but my opponent played on and of course I blundered.

In time trouble at the end, my scorecard was error-ridden. However, in the last few moves, I reached a position that could have provoked stalemate - but missed it! (In my defense, I had about 2:30 left on the clock).

Game 2 vs Nemiroff

This game featured a wild opening, the Rousseau Gambit. I played the worst possible move in response to 3. ... f5!? immediately losing a piece. After 4. Nc3 fxe4 5. Nxe4 d5!! the game was essentially over.

Or was it? I remembered that even though my opponent had pulled off a trappy opening, but they would still have to Play Chess and convert a victory. I would make him earn it.

As Ben Finegold says: "there's always time for your opponent to blunder." Also: "the winner is the one who makes the second to last blunder." My opponent had won a piece but had an exposed king and was late to castle. I set up pins, played carefully, and struck when the moment came with a tactic that regained a piece and left my opponent's king still in the center.

The complete game:

Game 3 vs Itmar

My first ever game as black against 1. d4 ... I had faced this rarely online but so far never in OTB slow chess (and only rarely at Bryant Park casual blitz games). My opponent played an aggressive Trompowsky Attack, which fortunately I had faced a few times here on Lichess - so I had some idea what to do even if I didn't have the best move.

After the opening complications, we reached the following position, black to move. The best move is something straight out of IM Andras Toth's "CPR: Development" Chessable course. I am going to revisit that course soon.

Anyhow, I didn't find that move and was struggling the rest of the game. However, to my surprise the engine shows that I had a winning position after my opponent blundered with 28. Qd3?? ...

Can you find the solution?

The complete game:

Game 4 vs Cao

I'll be honest: I was pretty exhausted at this point (the last round after 6 hours of playing). Mercifully my opponent was an 890-rated "Scholastic" player (she must have been about ... 7 or 8 years old). It continuously amazes me how methodical and emotionless children can be playing chess. That they can sit still and focused for over an hour is nothing short of amazing.

In any case, my opponent played the Sicilian, and I tried the Morra (because I don't know anything else... I'm going to change that soon!). She didn't bite, so we ended up playing a pretty standard Sicilian. I think the long day was wearing on my opponent as well as she missed at least one game winning tactic and started making somewhat pointless pawn moves near the end (I've noticed that many scholastic players fall back to "when you can't think of anything else, push a pawn" - not the first time I've encountered that).

After removing an annoying centrally-placed Knight (sacking the exchange with a Rook), I set up a kingside mating attack. My opponent didn't really defend. I knew I had gotten off easy.

Take-Aways / Conclusions

• I managed to not throw away the game early (as I did last time), resisting the urge to try foolish Bxf7+ ideas. This (obviously) allowed for longer, higher quality games with more chances.
• Even when my opponent has advantage out of the opening, if I remain calm and defend then their attack eventually fizzles. I can then grind out the rest of the game until a winning chance presents itself.
• I am consistently behind on the clock and in time trouble in the end game. I'm not sure what to do about this but continue studying tactics and "just enough" opening preparation to deal with trappy lines like the Rousseau Gambit and Trompowsky attack.
• Tactics, tactics, tactics. In every game I had a winning tactic, but didn't always spot it.
• Speaking of end games... time to start cracking on that!