Results [Updated]

Terrible, Terrible, Terrible. With no time to practice chess I guess my tactics have gotten a little rusty. So many blunders. I did manage to pull out one nice game in round 5, my only win for a total of 2/5, I should lose like 20 points or more, I don't feel like calculating it, just depressing. I'll put up the official change when it happens.

Woohoo, rating change not as bad as I thought:
2124->2110
Not pleasant, but I'll deal with it.

Round 1 Result

I lost in round 1 to GM Wojtkiewicz, I can't be too disappointed with the result. I made a few mistakes I would have liked to avoid, but I did realize this is my first ever game against a GM, so that is exciting for me. I hope to make my next one more successful. Either way, should be playing down tomorrow morning and up tomorrow evening if things go well. Hopefully I'll be reporting in with 2 more points in the tournament tomorrow night.

"Memorial" Day Classic 2006

So the "Memorial Day" tournament in LA this year is happening a week before memorial day which is , but what can I do about that. I strongly support there being a strong chess scene wherever I happen to live, but I can only do so much with no income and limited ability to attend a single tournament. I'm hoping to improve over my last result. I don't think this should be too big of a problem since last time I think in addition to not playing well I also ran into some bad luck. I only played close opposition in 2 rounds both were with black and I didn't otherwise get a chance to prove myself. Wish me luck!

Kamsky leads in Sofia

I don't have time for a long post right now, but Kamsky's results so far have been spectacular. He has beaten everyone in the field minus Topalov once and his only loss was at Topalov's hands who is 1.5 points behind him. Anand is in 2nd a full point behind and there have been many interesting games. I haven't had much time to study chess or blog recently due to school and Ditch Day activities (Ditch Day is a tradition at Caltech). Ditch Day happened on Wednesday so as soon as I get caught up in school I should be fine otherwise.

Tournament Results

I had a bad tournament this weekend. I won all my games playing down, but I was playing way down, and I lost 2 games playing up and even where the up was not by much. What can I do?
Rating change estimate: 2036->2024

Weekend Tournament: Los Angeles County Open 2006

The posts have been pretty scarce lately, I'm trying to make sure I graduate on time. However, I can't miss the opportunity to play a decent weekend event so I'll be driving the 15 minutes to the Los Angeles County Open in Monterey Park. It's not my favorite format with the one, large open section and the first day when I'll be looking for my big upset is 30/90 SD/30. I'll hopefully make a couple of updates this weekend of a positive result.

Mechanics Chess Club

I was up in San Francisco on Monday for a job interview (which I think went well) so I decided in the time I had before I had to leave for my flight I'd pop into the Mechanics Chess Club. It's a very nice club, not a whole lot of people around in the middle of the afternoon, but they had a very nice setup and if I end up living in the area I look forward to playing there.
Also, I don't know if Mechanics US Chess League is looking for an improving expert to play on board 4 in some matches or just to have on their roster, but if someone reading this knows tell them I'm interested :-).