5 Takeaways from the 2025 US Masters
Lessons on preparation, calculation, and creating your own luck from 9 rounds in Charlotte
Two weeks ago I played in the US Masters tournament which took place from November 26-30. This is an tournament that takes place in Charlotte, North Carolina each year and features many of the strongest Grandmasters from the United States as well as from many other countries.
There were 251 players who participated in the tournament and in order to play, you had to meet a list of requirements. These requirements mostly related to being a master-level player, or at least being close to it (hence the name of the tournament).
The tournament lasted 9 rounds and I ended up scoring 4.5/9 with 3 wins, 3 draws and 3 losses for a fairly average result. Based on this, I gained a whopping 1 rating point (USCF) which took me from 2329→2330 and I estimate that I’ll gain 7.6 FIDE rating points which might take me from 2180→2188.
Despite the result sounding fairly average and the rating gain being pretty minimal, I was actually very happy with most of my quality of play during this tournament. During the first 7 rounds where I scored 3.5/7 against an average opponent rating of 2280, I felt like I was playing fantastic. All three of my losses occurred in that span of games against three higher-rated players and all three of these games had the possibility to be draws (or maybe wins). Within in the first seven games, I also drew against a 2549-rated Grandmaster in a 98% accuracy game
and beat crushed a 2389-rated FIDE Master.
However, the last 2 rounds of the tournament went very poorly in some ways, and incredibly well in other ways. I drew both games against lower-rated opponents but should have lost both! I wrote a bit about these two games in this article:
All this put together, I was overall pretty happy with the result. Now that I’ve had a full week to analyze my games deeper, I wanted to list a few of my takeaways from this tournament based on my own games as well as other games that I got to watch:
1. Opening Preparation Matters
I was able to get really good opening preparation on the board in the first six games I played, despite a few of these players playing openings that I had never seen them play in the past. Not only is this good for morale and having a general idea of what to do going into the middlegame, but especially for a time trouble addict like me, it allowed me to be able to mask my time trouble problems a lot because I didn’t need to think in the opening phase:
Round 1: Spent no time off my clock all the way up through move 18
Round 2: Didn’t use any meaningful time on the clock until move 17
Round 3: Had everything prepped until move 19 when I accidentally deviated from my prep because I didn’t remember what to do on move 20
Round 4: Knew the first 9 moves then needed to start thinking
Round 5: Knew the first 13 moves then had to turn on my brain
Round 6: Had the first 18 moves of the game prepped and had a +4 advantage by that point since he had walked into a very dangerous attack
Starting in round 7, I purposefully deviated from my previous opening knowledge in order to get a position that I assumed would be unique to both of us (whether this was a good decision or not is debatable). In rounds 8+9, I felt uncomfortable coming out of the opening phases and didn’t really know what to do.
This opening “success” vs “non-success” seems to correlate heavily to my results in the games. I never really felt like I was “in the game” in the last two rounds and my being uncomfortable coming out of the opening and going into the middlegame definitely contributed to getting bad positions and having to fight to draw both games.
Summary: At a high-level, openings are very important and can sometimes make or break certain games. Below this level though, don’t overly focus on openings and instead just make sure you’re comfortable with your opening repertoire and have ideas of what to do going into the middlegame.
2. Calculation Over Everything
I’m stealing James Canty’s catch phrase here. Two of my three losses were decided by incorrect calculation which led to me losing games that I could have drawn if I had calculated better.
The first example is the above position I had vs FM Bryan Lin. Black is threatening …Rc2 to attack along the second rank and I cannot capture the e3-knight yet due to my own back rank problems and black’s d-pawn being dangerous. In the game I played 1. Qd2?? Rc2 2. Rxe3 Qc6! when I will lose my queen due to the skewer on the second rank. What I should have played was 1. h3! Rc2 2. Rxe3 Qc6 3. Qg3 d2 4. Rd3 Rc1+ 5. Kh2 d1=Q 6. Rxd1 Rxd1 7. Qb3+ Qd5 8. Qc2 when I’m down the exchange but black’s king is exposed enough that I should be able to create enough counterplay to get a draw, maybe by perpetual check.
The second example is the above position I had vs IM Kostya Kavutskiy. Black has two moves that lead to an equal position here but I played neither one of them. I went for 1…Rg8?? 2. Kf2 Bg4 3. Bxg4 hxg4 4. Nxg6 Rxg6 5. Rxf5 when (surprisingly) this rook endgame is completely lost for Black. What I should have done instead was 1…Rh6 (which looks incredibly passive but does hold equality) or 1…Bg4 2. Bxg4 hxg4 3. Nxg6 Nxh4! which holds equality due to ...Nf3+ forking the king and rook next.
To be honest, I’m not overly upset by these two games since I know how to work on improving at calculation going forward and it’s not really something I’ve prioritized in a while. It’ll be good to get back to the calculation grind going forward, especially since I would like to be competitive in the upcoming Chess.com Puzzle Championship which is usually held in the middle of January.
Summary: Usually games are decided by calculation. There tends to be one (or a few) key moments in a game where calculation will make the difference between a win, draw and loss. The better you are at calculating, the more likely you will be to play the best moves in those positions.
3. Good Moves Quickly > Great Moves Slowly
As mentioned earlier, I do think I was able to mask my typical time trouble problems by my opening prep getting me ahead on the clock in most games. However, outside of the openings, I did make a conscious effort to focus on making good moves fast over thinking too much and making great moves slowly. This paid off nicely because I was never in any significant time trouble compared to my opponent throughout this tournament. If I was low on the clock, in most games my opponent was as low as I was or even lower than me.
Even though I did make some calculation mistakes in time trouble (see above), I would like to attribute those mistakes more to calculation issues and less to time trouble issues. In the past I would have lost those games on time before I even got to the calculation critical moment in the first place.
Summary: Don’t waste time in positions where you have plenty of good moves available. Get good at making good moves quickly rather than great moves slowly.
4. Your Opponent Is Not a Machine
In three of my games my opponents had very large (+3 or higher) advantages for various stretches of moves and I scored 1/3 (two draws) in those games. That doesn’t sound like anything special but those two draws absolutely saved my tournament.
Takeaway number 5 below will touch on how I might have influenced those results somewhat, but for this fourth takeaway, I want to make the following clear: While you can create your own luck, your opponent also has to make mistakes themselves to let you back in the game.
The position above is taken from an earlier move in my game against FM Bryan Lin. In this position Black has various moves that will maintain their -3 advantage. I’m not even really threatening to play Bxd4 due to …Rd8 pinning my bishop and winning a piece. The best way to play here is probably 1…Ne3 when I cannot play 2. Rxd4 due to 2…Qb1+ winning the game. That being said, my opponent started to go astray in this position with 1…d3? 2. Be5 Ne3?! 3. Re1 Rc8 when we reach the first position in takeaway #2 above. If my opponent had played these few moves better, then he probably would have won the game much cleaner and not relied on me making a calculation mistake later. These kinds of conversion mistakes also happened in my final two rounds as well which led to me getting the draws.
Summary: Even if your position looks terrible, keep in mind that your opponent isn’t Stockfish. The chances that they play perfectly and never give you a single chance to get back into the game are relatively low. If you keep alert, then you will most likely get a chance to turn things around (or at least get a draw) if you’re looking for your opportunities.
5. You Create Your Own Luck
I talked about this in my previous article, but it is absolutely possible to create your own luck in a worse position. Here’s one example from my final round:
In this position I played the atrocious blunder of 1. Qd2?? after thinking for about 1 minute. My intention was to attack the a5-pawn and I felt like the only way for Black to defend against my threat was to play 1…Nd7 trying to get rid of my knight so that the Black queen could defend a5. My opponent did indeed play 1…Nd7 pretty quickly in the game and told me afterwards that he “trusted” my move and thought he had to play his …Nd7 response. However, playing 1. Qd2 is a huge mistake which allowed him to play 1…d5! and I have no way to prevent …Bb4, …d4 and …Qxb6 ideas. Fortunately he didn’t play this, partly due to my (misplaced) confidence.
Now, do I recommend playing bad moves quickly? No, of course not. But, note that I played the move confidently (because I didn’t know it was bad in the first place!) and my opponent trusted me. If I had thought for a long time then played Qd2 (two blunders in one move!), maybe my opponent would have been tipped off that there is something worth calculating in that position and found the best way to play.
Summary: Play your moves confidently, even if you aren’t sure about them. Your opponent might end up trusting you and give you too much credit!
Overall, this tournament reminded me that chess improvement isn’t linear. You can play some of your best games and still walk away with a minimal rating gain. But rating points aren’t the only measure of progress. I left Charlotte with clearer ideas about what to work on (calculation drills are back on the menu) and genuine confidence that my preparation and practical decision-making are trending in the right direction.
Next up: back to the calculation grind before the Chess.com Puzzles Championship in January. I’ll be announcing a month-long puzzle challenge for the readers then so stay tuned for that!
Great post Dalton, finding that whole h3 line vs. FM Lin would have been tough! (at least for me). Any idea why GM Donchenko was there? Long trip from Germany.