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Amateur Team West 07

US Amateur Team West

What happened to Caltech this year? Caltech had been a perennial contender (winning 3 of the last 4 and going into the last round in clear first in the other one), but this year we were missing out top board Patrick Hummel which convinced us to name ourselves "No Patrick, No Problem".
Last year we were good and lucky enough to win the event clear, this year we were much weaker (2020 vs 2197) and our last year's 2nd and 4th boards (Yanayt and I) were playing 1st and 2nd boards respectively this year. We had a rough start with Yanayt blundering from a completley won position in round 1 to tie a match we should've probably won despite this result. In round 3 we played the famous Hoo's the Next American Idol and despite being outrated on 3/4 boards only lost 1.5-2.5 and actually our board 3 was better the whole game and then played consecutive blunders throwing away the win on move 40 and losing the game outright on move 41, but such things happen in chess. We beat up some weaker team in round 4 and had a nice upset in round 5 fueled by our very consistant 4th board Mike Kaye's victory over a stronger player and myself on board 2 defeating a master as black (more on this below). In round 6 we were paired against a disappointed San Diego team whose top boards decided to call it an event and headed for the long drive home while their bottom two boards still wanted to play. We bravely allowed our lower boards to play the games to try to keep things as interesting as possible and they valiantly scored 1.5/2 to give us a very impressive result of 4.5/6 despite the early mis-steps. We tied for 4th overall and took 5th place on tiebreaks and 1st place U2100, I can say we can be happy with our early "Swiss Gambit". So sure, it wasn't first place, but this was the lowest rated Caltech team in the past 5 years and we still had a very solid result. Had it not been for some bad luck on our part we might have even been in contention.

My own results were kind of strange. In round 1 I was on the black side of a Slav and my opponent played one lazy move and then needed to accept an inferior position, but instead blundered allowing a nice tactic to win a piece and resigned before making his 16th move. In round 2 I was paired against another weaker opponent, this time as white. It was my first game against the Gruenfeld so I was slightly uncomfortable playing this very technical line I had prepared in general. My opponent played a few inaccurate moves and I was clearly better, but then he blundered allowing me to win a pawn and the bishop pair to which he apparantly decided he would rather be mated in one instead so I played 20. Qh7# (yes, I know you don't see the position) and again was the first one done on the team in under an hour. In round 3 I played the highest rated board 2 in the event in Joel Banawa who was sitting at a rating of 2380+. I missed my chance to generate serious counterplay, but may have still had chances to survive, but I blundered allowing him to win the exchange which I might have had some minimal compensation for if it werent for my followup trying to win the exchange back which I was lazy about calculating and missed (from far) that he had a nice tactic at the end of this line winning a piece and not losing the exchange back so I decided to resign instead of playing on down a whole rook. In round 4 I was paired down again, not quite so far this time and I got to play my first real game against the King's Indian, my opponent played a dubious (but common) variation and I gave a little lesson in ripping the queenside apart and not getting mated and I won fairly smoothly. In round 5 I was paired up to a 2278 as black. My opponent played the Exchange French which is a line that has definitely more poison than its reputation. If black plays lazily he can end up with problems developing his "free" french bishop. My opponent played a move that looked inaccurate in the opening and I found my chance to equalize completely. I realized from looking at the boards that I would probably need to win to give my team a real chance so I wanted to keep my chances high. I was quite proud of the move I found in the following position:

White just played 17. Qf5
(image generated from http://www.eddins.net/steve/chess/chessimager)

I was black in this position against an opponent more than 150 points higher rated than me. I had forseen this position and felt I should be better, but I realized I was a little loose and if I wasn't careful my better minor pieces could become less of a factor than my loose queenside. However, I had prepared a shot in this position which I will post the result at the bottom of this post, so don't scroll down if you want to try to find the strongest move in the position on your own. By the way, this move only achieves a positional goal and clarifies the position, it does not win material or give some overwhelming advantage. I would say after this move the position is clearly =+.

Anyways, I went on to win this game (although even after the diagram my opponent had reasonable drawing chances) which had a nice finish for me as the game simplified to KNNB v K which I could have won faster, but decided to enjoy myself by winning with just KNB v K ignoring my other knight. In the last round I chose not to play a game (otherwise someone else on my team wouldn't have gotten a game) and decided to give the games to the teammates who would get the most interesting games. And our 3rd and 4th boards stepped up as I mentioned to net us the U2100 prize on tiebreaks.

My goals:
Well, I guess I had some miscalculations in game 3 which wasn't great, but it was a tough game and I can't be totally disappointed with it. I am not holding myself to a standard of never missing anything in my calculations as my current goal is still to break 2200 and I'm not insisting to be perfect as that would be unreasonable. I spotted some nice tactics in a few of my games and don't feel like I missed out on major opportunities for the most part due to lazy calculation.

Rating change: 2132 -> 2144 (2 points from my all-time high!)










Solution to diagram: 17... Qc8! White cannot play 18. Qxf6 because Be7 traps the queen so the white queen is excavated (he traded it off on c8).

TNM: Round 5

I think I need to learn to be more vindictive at the chessboard. Not necessarily to my opponents, but to his moves. I think I definitely let my opponent off the hook for a couple of strange looking moves which just yielded an endgame which was probably superficially better for me, but should have been drawn. This is actually how I beat him last time as well. This time we went into a pawn endgame that should have been a draw, but offered me better chances (kind of a strange thing to say about a pawn endgame). Sure enough he didn't find the most accurate moves (although I will admit the only defense I've found is kind of ugly-looking) and he lost the game.

I'm a little upset with myself lately, I haven't been studying chess as much as I should, but I've been a little preoccupied with my social life, strange to say that as a chess player. This game kind of made me think of something interesting. In many chess positions we play, we have no sense absolutely as to whether the position is a win or a draw, but we can normally quantify some kind of "advantage", when is it okay to go into a position we know objectively is a draw, but will very often be a win in practice. For example the endgame K+R+B vs K + R is a theoretical draw, but given the opportunity to play this endgame from the attacking side or maintain some small, but definite advantage in an endgame I would probably choose to be the attacking side in K+R+B vs K + R as in practice the defender does very poorly. But then of course I would feel guilty that I simply ignored the "chess truth" in the position and instead took an overly practical point of view. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but I think it's an interesting discussion. I guess the day some opening is worked out to a K+R+B vs K+R endgame we will see how much chess truth matters where we see if either 1, the white side avoids it or 2) the black side avoids it. Although I guess in a sense, neither side can be too happy. White didn't maintain a theoretical advantage and black gave a position where his losing chances are high and his winning chances are nil.

Tuesday Night Marathon: Round 4

This game wasn't a success by most measures. I gained some experience playing the white side of the Catalan. I'm still learning this opening and I carelessly played what looked like a natural move only to find that it was a true gambit of a pawn. I still had reasonable Catalan-like compensation, and I thought I managed to hold things together with a key exchange sacrifice that give one or two moves to consolidate (somehow I need to consolidate to be better, not the rook, it was strange) I would've had a nice position, but my opponent found some accurate moves to put the point away. Kind of sad, I missed a few opportunities in the middlegame, but I think I got a much better feel for the position which is necessary before I can really start analyzing it intelligently on my own.

Kind of a curious point here. It's very hard to simulate the ideas you get under game-pressure at home. I've tried, but the development isn't normal. Maybe I just need to work on the exercise a little more. I've been thinking about this a little. I guess part of the problem is it becomes a little trickier when if you miss an idea for one side you will likely miss it for both, but still it seems there should be some reasonable way of trying to do this type of exercise for an hour or so a couple of times a week. Find some middle-game position in an opening I play, try to put in serious time and do some solitaire chess. Afterwards take a quick look to see if any of my ideas had interesting merit, check them out and be done with it.

Tuesday Night Marathon: Status after round 3

I decided to give the Tuesday Night Marathon another go even after my heart-breaking finish in my last attempt. I am 2/2 as white so far which is slightly out of the ordinary for me lately, but these games were both playing down so we'll see how things go in future rounds. I'm 3/3 after 3 rounds overall, this tournament is one of the few FIDE-rated events in the bay area so I figured I should be playing in it with any attempt to get more rated games, starting next round I should get a crack at some of the stronger opponents, I just need to keep winning like I did last time so I can keep playing them. I would say my nicest game so far was a quick win in round 2 where my opponent played an inaccurate move order in the opening which I responded to with the best move and then my opponent overreached a little bit by playing moves which somewhat attempted to refute my opening which was a pretty good sign I would have resources to get a better position. I did, which he followed up by letting his queen get trapped so he had to sacrifice it for a rook and knight, but being behind in development and not having a reasonable place to castle he was doomed and resigned a few moves later. Round 1 I showed an amazing ability to miss the same idea multiple times as part of a tactical sequence to only amazingly see it later when it somehow still worked, I wasn't too proud of this performance, but hey, it got the job done.

Round 3:
This game I played okay, I think I missed some early opportunities to get a very large advantage, but I did manage to go into an endgame with a large positional edge and quickly won a pawn. After this I will admit I played somewhat inaccurately, but then something happened which isn't entirely new to me, my opponent, clearly being the defender and being a pawn down offered me a draw. Now, I will admit, I'm not 100% sure the position was winning at that point, but I'm positive it was not a trivial draw either. I've seen people do this and I think once you're above 1800 it's an absolutely rude and ridiculous thing to do, especially to a higher rated opponent. I even saw my good friend offer a draw to a grandmaster in a 4 vs 3 rook ending from the defending that may have been defensible from the defensible, although I have my doubts, but was certainly no clear draw. But I think any player above 1800 should at least follow this rule: if it is clear that your opponent is even nominally better and it's clear that you have 0 chances to win, do not offer a draw, it does not show your understanding of chess, what it does show is a lack of class. I especially love when these players then after the game tell you the position "was an obvious draw" after they go on and lose the game. I mean it is known that King + Bishop + Rook vs King + Rook is a draw, I expect 99.9% of players to make the defender play it out. It doesn't matter how trivial the drawing technique is by the way for an endgame, let the attacking side offer the draw, you show you understand what's happening on the board that way.

Western Class Championship Results

Western Class Championship Results

The tournament got a decent turnout, GMs Yermolinsky and Khachiyan both played along with IMs Sevillano, Matikoziyan, Pruess, Mezentsev, and Stein. I started out playing okay. I had an interesting game against Robby Adamson in my first game, I had a strong advantage, but made a couple of obviously bad decisions which allowed him to complicate the position with an unclear sacrifice that was much easier to play for him regardless of the true assessment. In my second game a strong expert from Arizona in what was a complicated positional struggle where an early decision to leave the king in the center was later a deciding factor after I defended for quite a while. In the third game I faced IM Mezentsev and I unfortunately walked into a little trap in the opening that left him (with the black pieces) with a better position and me with little active play, I tried to stir things up, but the position was already too bad and I lost in short order. In my 4th game I achieved a position with an extra pawn and a better position straight from the opening, but after one missed move and a couple of serious miscalculations I achieved a position where my opponent had a lot of counterplay despite being a pawn down, in this game I was particularly upset at the various missed tactics even though I saw some reasonably tricky ideas that were necessary to keep the game in control, but ultimately I was only able to draw. In the next game I was paired down and I made several bad decisions missing my chance to get the better of the position, but fortunately my opponent missed his opportunity to put me into serious danger and then in what was at best a slightly better position for me he actively blundered a piece to give me the game. This guy says he's a reader of my blog so I give him the utmost respect. In the last round I was paired agianst a slightly higher rated expert who I've played before, this game was flawed in many ways, I "tactically" won a pawn from the opening, but it turns out the tactic was flawed in a few fairly obvious ways that we both completely missed. After a few more moves I was essentially just a pawn up, but there were aggressive possibilities for both sides. I made a bad practical decision right before the time control (which I could have delayed until after the time control by repeating moves one more time) and then quickly blundered into mate. Overall I feel like I played well, unfortunately my struggles as white continued, it's arguable that I played my toughest opposition as white, but I got good positions in two of the games and then mishandled the positions completely so I think it's fair to say I need more practice both playing an analyzing these types of positions.


How I did at my goals?
Well, I didn't finish +1, in fact I finished -1, but I was within range. I was very good at spending 10-20 seconds on early moves making sure I didn't have two positions confused, thinking about what other options I had, I think this worked quite well as I felt like I didn't catch myself not thinking on any moves, now as to the quality of my thought that was a little lower than I was hoping for. I did miss a few of my opponents moves, but it was at least a rare occurrance. This doesn't sound like a complete success, but I am pretty satisfied and if I can continue this positive trend I will have good results in the future.

2006 Review / Goals for 2007

2006 Review / Goals for 2007:

The year 2006 was a good year overall for me. Chess did not go as well as I had hoped. I figured I should reflect on my goals from last year, see where I hit and where I missed and make some new goals for 2007.

My goals last year were to:
1) Break 2200 USCF, preferably by the end of National Open
2) Reduce the frequency of offering/taking draws from superior positions.

Well on #1 I would say I failed, but I don't think I appreciated the difficulty I would face in trying to break this mark. So after the last tournament of 2005 (North American Open 2005) my rating was 2094 coming off of 2 strong results. This year started with some solid showings. I failed to show good form in a couple of rounds in last year's Western Class Championship, but then followed it with a strong 5.5/6 (4.5/5 played) at Amateur Team West to help my team win and with the 4th board prize. I followed that up with some reasonable results including a tournament I was quite happy with at Western Pacific Open where I think I showed some good chess, but had one game which I lost a totally dominating position due to missing the critical moment in the game. Probably due to a lack of confidence I had some bad results following that and lost most of my progress.

Then came my move to San Francisco which I started with a particularly lucky result to get a 4.5/5 in a g/45 tournament up here which was immediately followed with a heartbreaking Southern California state championships candidate tournament which went beautifully with a draw against my friends (as solid master) as black round 2 and a win over a strong expert in round 3 just to carelessly blunder a piece in round 4 and barely miss qualification. Again I saw a some mixed results in g/45 tournaments which doesn't particularly bother me so much as the results in such quick time controls can be somewhat random, but I had very bad showings in both the Northern California State Championships and the Western States Open in Reno while simultaneously having an amazing result in the Tuesday night marathon which I spoiled when I blundered execessively to get miniatured in the last round as white. Still though even through these bad results I luckily managed not to lose FIDE rating points in any of them while my USCF rating did a little very temporary dip below 2100. Lately I feel like I've been playing quite solidly with real chances to have breakthrough results, but I've kept coming short. American Open I managed to show a very sad quality of poor technique in winning my won positions which I was very disappointed with. I played the strong East Bay FIDE Swiss and had a solid performance there, but again missed some key opportunities in some of my games both where I could have failed to win a won game and where I failed to be as resourceful as I could in some of the other games. Then recently in Las Vegas I saw laziness in quite a few of my moves. I'm hoping this was just due to fatigue after just having finished a long tournament, but I will be very aware when I play in my upcoming event in 2 weeks.

Why didn't I break 2200?
I don't think I was working as hard and specifically on the right areas as I should have been. I've been making a serious effort to improve my calculation lately, I still feel like this is one area I'm significantly lacking in and I will continue to work on. Right now I have two problems in that I'm both a lazy calculator (I miss opportunities for both sides) and my calculations are a little slow, but there are instances where I've seen some improvement lately. I also think I underestimated the difficulty of this goal, but I feel confident that I'm closing in on this barrier.

What about the other goal?
I think I did a better job of declining draws in positions where I felt I was the one with more to play for, possibly a few slips from this, but for the most part I showed a good killer instinct in this respect. On the other hand I saw that I was having a lot of trouble winning won positions which I feel I should be able to win a very high proportion of the time.


Goals for 2007:
1) Break 2200 USCF (currently ~2128): I'm hoping this won't be as hard as it's seemed lately, I need to continue to work on my calculation.
2) Break 2200 FIDE (as it stands approximately 85 points to go): This will have the nice benefit of enabling me to play in such events as the Las Vegas Masters more easily, I think I need to fix some of the problems I have where I make bad decisions to lose the games in simple situations. This is particularly bad against lower rated players where I should win more often than not.
3) IM or GM scalp. I had more than a few good shots in 2006, the older and wiser me should be better at carrying through.

If anybody thinks of some more good ones that I should have I'd be more than willing to consider them.

North American Open Result / New Year's Resolution

I'm pretty tired right now and I have work tomorrow, but I figured I'd post some brief results. I went 4/4 with black and 0.5/3 with white, this could be considered coincidental, but I think in all 3 games as white I had real opening problems in some sense. In my last 9 games as black I'm 6.5/9 with the only 2 losses coming against GMs. This is a solid result. I'd like to make my white results equally as good.

Chess New Year's Resolutions:
1) Improve my calculation and try to play fewer superficial moves at the board.
2) Improve my calculation.
3) Improve my calculation.

EBCC FIDE "swiss" result

The event finished without any spectacular or disasterous results. I beat NM Andy Lee in round 6 after I achieved a much better position, blundered it away in one move, and then had the favor significantly returned to me. In round 7 I lost to IM Pruess after chances were missed for both sides during the complications. In round 8 I recieved a forfeit due to some incidents. In round 9 I lost unfortunately smoothly to IM Sarkar after playing too aggressively in the opening. In round 10 I achieved a nice position from the opening against GM Panchanathan, then I played a few inaccurate moves to give him the advantage which followed him winning a second pawn but giving me real counter-play. He blundered allowing me to win a piece, but I was playing quickly as not trying to drag on the game and I thought I chose between two moves that were equally good, but he had a shot against my choice that didn't work against the other so he won the game quickly from there. All in all I feel what this tournament let me know the most was that I need to work harder on my calculations at the board and that I still have a few minor holes in my opening preparation that need some work. I need to slow down some of my decisions and calculate more thoroughly, but I believe if I can achieve this I can improve my results quickly.

Rating Change: 2119->2125

EBCC FIDE "swiss" half-way

So far I'm 1.5/5 for traditional scoring and 4/13 for BAP. I missed a forced draw in round one against IM Roussell-Roozmon, in round 2 I beat Mr. BAP himself, in round 3 I lost to FM Rensch who roughed me up. In round 4 I continue this losing to Sharavdorj as black although he's known for being particularly tough as white. In round 5 I got paired against Shankland, I missed on my guess for his prep and didn't know the line I played too well, but I defended pretty well and he rushed through the endgame so I managed to hold. Strange thing is in round 6 I'm paired against Andy Lee who is having a stellar tournament now with 3 wins in a row with the last two over IMs as black. Now I get him as black. THIS WILL BE MY 3RD BLACK IN A ROW! Oh well, I shouldn't mind, all my points so far are as black.

Guthrie McClain Memorial

Guthrie McClain Memorial

Okay, I was a little slow about writing this one up, sorry to my loyal fans. First round I won pretty smoothly. Second round I got a gigantic advantage out of the opening only to blow it away and I eventually won some same color bishop endgame after missing many wins in it where it may have even been drawn at some point (although I'm not 100% sure). Third round I played a low expert, I was careless in the opening and allowed a check to displace my king where I still stood well, but needed to play some active moves as despite my exposed king I was still ahead in development, I failed to do so and got an inferior position. I did create tricks in the position however which allowed me to come back and I even missed a simple win. I was still pushing in an opposition color bishop + rook endgame where in time trouble I blundered to allow a simplification into a dead-drawn opposite color bishop endgame, but the original endgame may have been drawn anyways. In the fourth round I faced the talented kid Nicholas Nip. As a note, in the current rating list I have now played (and gotten at least a draw) against the #1 age 8, age 10, age 11, and age 16. Nicholas surprised me in the opening being very well prepared after last time when he carelessly dropped a piece in the same opening. I got a tough position and tried to sacrifice an exchange to stay alive, but I played a few inaccurate moves and he collapsed my position. In the last round I played my friend Chad Salinas who I knew when we were both in Southern California. I actually misplayed the opening and he was probably already ok, but then he blundered away a crucial center pawn and resigned.

What can I say about this tournament? My score of 3.5/5 isn't great, but it's not terrible either. I wasn't too happy with my technique in round 2, and I shouldn't have missed simple stuff in round 3, in round 4 I wasn't happy, but my opponent played well, of course I'd prefer to "school" these grade-school prodigies, but g/45 is tough. In round 5 I need to study this opening line a little better (which I have some now and am even considering adding it as a possible defense as black), but at least I didn't miss my opportunities.

Rating Change: 2125 -> 2119

American Open Results

American Open Results:
Well, as I seem to spend a good deal of time here writing about the Mechanics, I might as well congratulate IM Pruess and IM Zilberstein for their performances this weekend. I would also like to congratulate my former (due to geographical restrictions) coach GM Khachiyan on his victory and his very nice win over GM Perelshteyn (who led almost the entire way). Pruess tied for 1st place in the tournament with Khachiyan. Zilberstein took clear first U2450, I talked to both of them after their games, both seemed very unhappy that they didn't do better! Apparently BOTH were upset about not scoring more, I invite them to take out their frustration with having each of their most recent games being a draw to turning their most recent games into wins on Wednesday in the US Chess League championships against New York.

[Update: I forgot to mention when I originally wrote this that not only did Pruess and Khachiyan win the event, their victories also qualified them for the 2007 US Championship. An additional congratulations to these two for this accomplishment.]

My result:
Well, my result I can't really call "bad", but in many ways I was unhappy with my play. I'll cover round by round. The first four rounds were game in 1 hour. In round 1 I played IM Matikozyan as black. He played a bad move against the french and I opted out of the most natural (and best!) reply to play a move over which I completely overlooked his response. I could accept a very depressing position, but instead I decided to sacrifice a pawn. This actually was probably not the correct decision, but anyways, he held onto his pawn and won the game although we were both under 1 minute at the end of the game and he had to find a fairly easy breakthrough to win, but still, not a great way to lose.

In round 2 I faced my friend NM Julian Landaw as black. A little history in this pairing: we've played 4 times now, I've had black in all 3 encounters. I collapsed quickly in our first meeting, but in the 2nd one I basically refuted his opening and in the 3rd game I again refuted the same opening, but failed to convert and drew the game. After this game, he entirely changed lines against the french and this time played a King's Indian Attack against it. We got an interesting position from the opening and after a few inaccuracies on my part he had a slightly better position, but I defended well and in the time scramble even developed an initiative after finding a series of accurate moves. In fact, at one point I had FORCED MATE! but it was tricky and I missed one move in the continuation that wasn't too hard to find. I'm quite upset about this as I saw the key idea just missed the simple continuation, quite sad. Even though I only had 1:30 on my clock I still believe I should find this win, I actually offered him a draw before he blundered not wanting a game between friends to be decided by a zeitnot blunder, and I guess it wasn't unfortunately. Eventually we drew although even in the final position (although under a minute + delay) I actually was still winning. If this were an isolated incident I could live with it.

Due to the small 3-day schedule in the open section I received a full point bye in round 3. Normally I much prefer to play, but after 2 games that went the full 2 hours I hadn't had any time to eat and was starving so I got to spectate in round 3. In round 4 I played 6. f4 against the Najdorf playing NM Paul Gallegos as white when I played a series of inaccurate moves in the opening which I was relatively unfamiliar with only to get an inferior position. I fought hard to defend in the middle game and eventually he went wrong by allowing some unfavorable exchanges and already I had a better position. At some point when we were both under 5 minutes he had a chance to just remain a pawn down in a R+ minor piece ending or to sacrifice his bishop for my 2 remaining pawns and defend R+N vs R+P which would have been unpleasant. Instead he let me trade into what is probably a winning R+P ending, but with less than a minute on my clock I reached for a pawn, grabbed it and immediately realized I had given up a draw. He decided not to take it and we played a few moves in this dead drawn position, but I defended with ease and we shook hands shortly afterwards.

So I had survived day one of what some were dubbing "the dead zone" due to the tough field (in fact, IM Zilberstein played UP in round 1. In round 5 I played a master from Austrailia a good piece of preparation netted me a winning position, but I failed to play some simple moves and got myself in trouble at which point I was relieved by my opponents draw offer. I was probably not worse in the position, but I certainly wouldn't mind playing the black side.

In round 6 I played my friend NM Ilya Serpik whom I have a very good record against. On move 23 I won a pawn, but I somehow moved my queen from an absolutely beautiful square on c3 and allowed counter-play and took a draw.

In round 7 I played NM Aigner who I had played recently played. He surprised me by playing the Sveshnikov and I got a good position, but it was complicated and I got myself into time trouble and played some bad moves to throw away my advantage and give my opponent a strong attacker, a good attack. He easily wiped me away and gave me my second loss of the tournament.

I should talk about my feelings going into the last day. I had played 6 rounds (okay, only actually played 5) and still hadn't put a win on the board, I was quite upset as at this point I had 4 games where I had winning positions. So in round 8 I prepared for a Caltech grad student Cedric Pahud who is from Switzerland. I had prepared for about 30 minutes the 6. f4 line against the Najdorf that I played in round 4, but when the position arose on the board I flippantly decided that I would play Be3 instead. My opponent played a side line that isn't supposed to be good, but I played some inaccurate moves and I did not get as big of an advantage as I think I could have. Anyways, we played on and I got a strong attack eventually, but allowed the position to complicate near time control (where I got in time trouble along with my opponent trying to find the strongest continuations. Eventually i won a pawn, but the position was very wild, but I found a strong continuation but my opponent eventually buckled under the pressure and allowed me to force mate. Finally a win!

Rating change: 2110-> 2125

Carroll Capps Memorial

In past years this was a relatively strong event, it wasn't quite as strong this year, but there were a few masters I wanted to get a crack at. The tournament started well, in the first round I got my warm-up by slowly outplaying a B-player to get the win as black. In the second round I played a young (and hence dangerous) 1800 as white and got a nice King's Indianesque mating attack on the white side of the open Sicilian strangely enough. In round 3 disaster struck. My opponent played a move I knew from previous preparation to be dubious, but I didn't take the time to calculate moves I "knew" to be theory when in fact I was confusing two similar lines that would have been easy to check if I had calculated so I ended up just dropping a pawn then followed it up by blundering and exchange. I fought back tough and at some point was even up a pawn for the exchange I blundered so early, but my opponent held on for the win. In round 4 (the last g/1) I faced an unrated guy from Germany who was reasonably strong and had a provisional (but still unpublished) rating of 179x. He played a tricky opening line and I made one mistake to give back his sacrificed pawn and go into an endgame that was slightly better for black. My opponent seemed eager just to draw, but I was not ready for this result so I played on despite my slightly inferior position and I was rewarded later by being able to play a nice tactic on the board that won 2 pawns (it offered a rook sacrifice that could not be accepted do to a somewhat strange looking mate) and after that I won easily. So finally I got to go home and rest and prepare for an opponent I had played not too long ago. This time he chose to play the advanced variation against "my" french defense and played 2 or arguably 3 horrific positional moves the the opening when I got what I thought was close to a winning advantage. Unfortunately I played one move based on miscalculation which gave him the moves h3 and g4 for free which really put me under a bind. I thought my position was close to lost when I realized that I had a nice resource which he needed to avoid as it won on the spot following a strong attack I had for the exchange. I eventually ended up in a 3 pawn up R+N endgame where my technique was far from optimal but more than good enough to win. In the last round I finally got to play NM Michael Aigner. This was my first game against a player 2200-2450 since reno (i.e. a stronger player, but one I could be reasonably expected to score some points against too). I played very strangely in the opening (he played the bird's opening which is famous for with the nickname fpawn on ICC) and we reached a complicated middlegame which just favored white in all variations unfortunately, I tried to generate some tricks, but it was to no avail and he wrapped up the point cleanly. Overall even though the result was similar, I can be much happier with my play this weekend, I feel my tactics getting better, I just need to continue to practice before American Open in 2 weeks.
Estimated Rating Change: 2116 ->2110

EBCC Nov Swiss

I was quite lazy reporting on this disappointing result. Sam Shankland convinced me to play in this tournament at the East Bay Chess Club when normally I avoid tournaments with no or little chance of playing stronger opponents (yes I realize the paradox in this, but I'm not strong enough where I feel this is a real issue yet). He told me I would be the 5th seed in what is normally a small event so this looked like a good chance to play "up" in 2/4 rounds or more. However, when I arrived that Saturday (a little over a week ago now) I found out this was not the case at all and in fact I was the 2nd seed. So I started the tournament against a mid-A player who surprised me with a move that is probably objectively bad, but was quite difficult to find the best response to over the board. Fortunately, he soon when awry and played a sacrifice that I proved unsound due to a counter-sacrifice. I achieved an endgame that should be won with 2 Knights versus a rook, but the technical task was quite difficult and I messed it up a little bit an failed to win. Quite sad. The next round I played one inaccurate move in the opening in a Petroff and already a very sterile position was reached and after only slightly more than 20 moves the position was near dead so we shook hands. This wasn't quite as bad as the opponent was also an expert. I came back the next day looking to finally get a W on the board when I faced Adarsh Konda for the 3rd time in about 2 months as black. This time he again chose a different line against the Slav, I didn't choose the best reaction, but still got a very comfortable position from the opening. I held a slight advantage for a long time, but then near time control (due to missing my B.A.R.T train and also missing the first bus from the BART station I showed up 30 minutes late to the game) I played some inaccurate moves and I was on the slightly worse side of an endgame which I held without too much difficulty. In the last game I was playing another A-player looking for some blood after 3 draws in a row. After some opening inaccuracies on my part I already felt under pressure as white, but fortunately my opponent let me back in the game and at some point I traded into an endgame that I was almost positive would be winning or at least in practice winning for me, and after missing like 5 wins (but to be fair, they weren't trivial 1-move wins or anything, they required very concrete calculation, which is no excuse, but at least not as pathetic) I only managed to draw. So 4 draws in 4 rounds, incredibly disappointing and 2/4 is definitely my worst "undefeated" result ever.
Rating change: 2129 -> 2116