Recapping January's Tournaments

My New Years resolution and a tournament victory!

Feb 06, 2024

January was a busy month for me in regards to playing tournaments! I made it a New Year’s resolution to play in more OTB tournaments this year, especially more local tournaments and January has been a good start to that resolution so far.

Over the past few years COVID has lessened and tournaments began running again. I played in two tournaments in 2020 before the lockdown started, four tournaments in 2021, eight in 2022 but only four again in 2023. The slowing of tournament play this past year was partly due to other things going on in life that made traveling for extended periods of time difficult (such as moving to a completely different state). However, the goal is to now get back into playing more tournaments in 2024.

Now that I live in Ohio, I am going to be playing in many more local tournaments and in January I was able to play in two of them: the Cardinal Open and Northeast Ohio Open. In this post I’ll be recapping each of these tournaments and specifically focusing on some of the critical moments from each game:

2024 Cardinal Open Stats:

5 rounds
60+10 in rounds 1-2 and 90+30 in rounds 3-5
Score: 3.5/5 (three wins, one loss, one draw)
Place: Tie for 3rd
Rating change USCF: 2310 → 2308 (-2)
Rating change FIDE: 2176 → 2174 (-2)

Round 1: Black vs Van Zandweghe, Henri (2090 USCF)

After a fairly balanced middlegame I had finally gained control of the game over the past five moves and was able to create some attacking chances against white’s king. My opponent’s last move was 30. Bxb7. How to progress with the attack?

I went for 30…fxe4 31. Bxe4 d5. If 32. Bd3 then 32…e4! opens the f-file leading to 33. fxe4 Qh2+ 34. Kf2 Bd2+ which forces White to give up their queen and I will still get checkmate soon after. White decided to give up the bishop with 32. Bxd5 Rxd5 and I won later with the extra piece.

Round 2: White vs Tan, Ralph (2257 USCF)

After my opponent misplayed the opening (…c5-c4 earlier locked up the pawn structure and is very favorable for White) we reach a position where I have a pleasant advantage. The general plan is to play for the f5 pawn break. Should White play this immediately or prepare it with g4 first?

In the game I played 13. f5? exf5 14. Qxf5?? which was a very rushed and frankly terrible sequence of moves. My opponent punished this swiftly with 14…Ndc5! opening the c8-bishop to attack my queen and the knight will jump into the d3-square next with check. Ouch. I had considered all of black’s knight jumps and discovered attacks but completely blanked on this specific option! My position turned very bad, very quickly. Somehow I was able to make the game last 40 moves but I never really had any chances to draw or turn things around. It’s pretty rare that I make such a straightforward blunder like this in my games, especially when I’m not in any time trouble but unfortunately it happened in a big way here.

It would have been much better to play 13. g4! preparing the f5 pawn break. Here Stockfish gives White a fairly large +1.8 advantage. Interestingly enough, we will see a very similar position later in the tournament where I was able to apply what I had learned from this game!

Round 3: Black vs Opaska, Michael (2039 USCF)

The opening to this game had been pretty normal so far but my opponent has just played the move 14. Be5 which was a mistake. How can Black punish this?

The game continued 14…Bxe5 15. dxe5 Bd3! forking the rook and c4-pawn. White loses a pawn and has zero compensation. Later in the game another position arose where I was happy with my calculation:

I had been able to win a second pawn as the game continued but White is stirring up some potential attack against my kingside. There are many good moves for Black but I went for 28…Rxd3! 29. Rxd3 Bc2 when white’s rook cannot move due to …Bg6 trapping white’s queen. White responded with 30. Ree3 Bxd3 31. Rxd3 and I had been able to trade off a pair of rooks and bishops which severely reduced the firepower for white’s attack. I won the game a bit later without any trouble.

Round 4: White vs Abraham, John (2129 USCF)

This opening position had a lot of similarities with my second rounds game. I’m not sure if my second and fourth round opponents knew each other or if this kid had seen how badly I played in the second round and decided to copy the opening. Either way, White has an objective advantage due to the pawn structure. In the previous game I went for a hasty f5 push. After that game I had studied the pawn structure a bit and learned from my mistakes. I now knew it was best to prepare f5 in a different way with 11. g4! Na5 12. Bh3 Qc7 13. Be3 Nb6 14. f5 and Black is in a very difficult position. I later broke open the kingside half of the board and won.

Round 5: Black vs Radhakrishnan, Sharath (2162 USCF)

I had been able to build up a strong position and now had the chance to cash in on my piece activity advantage and win material. However, I was already in time trouble here which led to me miscalculating and missing my opponent’s resource. At that point my advantage had gone down drastically. How should Black play from here?

The best way to play is 22…Bc2! 23. Qb4! (23. Qa2?? Rxd1 24. Bxd1 Bd3!) Bxd1 24. Qxd2 Bxf3 25. gxf3 Qg5+ 26. Kh1 Qxc5 27. Qxf4 Qxa3 and Black is ahead a pawn with a safer king. Another option is to play 22…Bxf1 23. Rxd2 Bxc4! 24. Qd1 Qxc5 where Black is ahead two pawns but after 25. Qc1! the coordination of pieces and pin on the c-file is very awkward. In the game I went for a third option that didn’t work the way I had intended: 22…Rb8?! 23. Rfe1! This was a strong counterattack that I had missed in my calculation.

My opponent offered a draw at this point and I ended up accepting it due to having less than 2 minutes on my clock. In hindsight, I should have played on and gone for 23…Rxb3 24. Rxe5 Rxd1+ 25. Bxd1 Rb8 with the threat of …f6 followed by …Rb1. The pressure is definitely on White at this point but objectively they are okay if they play precisely. The draw ended up securing a tie for third place which got me a little bit more money than the entry fee so it was hard to complain.

However, time management is definitely something I’ve been working on (and continue to work on) and it was not good to have the result of this game be affected by my time trouble. Fortunately I improved my time management a lot in my next tournament which paid dividends! I’ll probably write about my journey to improve my time management troubles in a future post. There’s quite a lot involved in that story!

2024 Northeast Ohio Open Stats:

5 rounds (I played in rounds 1-3 and 5 with a bye in round 4)
60/10 in rounds 1-2 and 90+30 in rounds 3-5
Score: 4.5/5 (four wins, one bye)
Place: 1st!
Rating change USCF: 2308 → 2325 (+17)
Rating change FIDE: 2174 → 2182 (+8)

Round 1: White vs Marshall, Calvin (2000 USCF)

We have a Marcozy Bind pawn structure here and Black is trying to put pressure on my queenside pawns while I’m working to keep them safe and strong. There is a strong way to play here to put a lot of pressure on Black. What to play?

I went for 18. a5! with the threat of Ra4 trapping the queen. Black’s only good move here is to play 18…b5! 19. axb6 Nxb6 when White has the advantage but the game goes on. Instead, my opponent played 18…Nc5? instead which does prevent Ra4 but runs into other problems. 19. Qc2! threatens another queen trap (Nd5) which forces Black to play 19…e6. Next 20. Bd2! sets up further threats of discovered attack and traps against black’s queen. Black is forced to sacrifice material to stop the queen from being completely lost and Black ended up losing the game later.

Round 2: Black vs Zheng, Marcus (2097 USCF)

I had been in control of this game throughout with the bishop pair and White having a weak isolated d-pawn. How to cash in on the advantage?

Here there is a simple tactic of 29…Bxa3! winning a pawn due to the b2-pawn being overloaded defending the knight and a3-pawn at the same time. I later converted my material advantage into a win with no trouble.

Round 3: White vs Weaver, Benjamin (2223 USCF)

This was the most difficult game of the tournament by far. I had a tricky position in the opening earlier on when I decided on my opening randomly. My exact thoughts on move 1: “If I look at the clock on the wall and the second hand is on an even number I’ll play 1. e4 and if it’s on an odd number I’ll play 1. c4” (it ends up being an even number): 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6. My thoughts on move 3: “If I look at the clock and the second hand is on an even number I’ll play the Scotch Game and if it’s on an odd number I’ll play Ruy Lopez” (it ends up being an even number again): 3. d4 exd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 etc.

Maybe in the future I shouldn’t decide what opening I’ll play during a game this way…

Anyways, the opening was a bit tricky but then my opponent made mistakes to give me a big advantage. I made mistakes myself though and we ended up getting into this even-ish two-rook endgame. Fortunately my opponent just blundered with 33…Rb2. How to win from here?

Despite being somewhat low on time I quickly calculated 34. Rc8+! Kh7 35. Rxh5+ Rh6 36. Rxh6+ Kxh6 37. Rxc6+ where I’ve won two pawns and win the resulting rook endgame easily. If Black had played 34…Kf7 then 35. Ra7+ Kf6 36. Rxc6+ Kf5 37. Ra5+ allows me to win the rook on g6 next. I found that to be a pretty staircase checking sequence.

Also to note, 34. Rxh5? allows 34…Rf6 when Black wins the f2-pawn and gets back to equality.

Round 4: 1/2 point bye

Round 5: Black vs Radhakrishnan, Sharath (2173 USCF)

Coincidentally I end up playing the same opponent in the final round of the tournament twice in a row! I definitely wanted to win this game to prove that the draw in our previous game wasn’t going to be a consistent trend. After good opening preparation I got into this position where I’m ahead a pawn but White wants to play Rf4 or Kh2-g3 to win the pawn back soon. What to do as Black?

There are many ways to play as Black but I was happy with what I came up with. I went for 25…Kd7 walking the king closer to protect the f5-pawn and set a trap. White went for 26. Rf4 Ke6 27. Rxf3?? and blunders right into my trap. Now 27…Nd4! wins material since the bishop is pinned and wherever the rook goes it will either get forked by …Ne2+ or if it goes to h3 then …f4 will win the bishop that is pinned. White ended up sacrificing the exchange with 28. Bxd4 Rxf3 29. Bxg7 Rh3 30. Bxh6 Rxh5 and I won the endgame with the material lead shortly afterwards.

It would have been better for White to play 27. Kh2! first before trying to take the f3-pawn, though Black still has some advantage there.

So, January ended with a 15-point USCF gain (2310 → 2325) and an 8-point FIDE gain (2176 → 2184) as well as my first tournament victory in a long time! This isn’t unusual though since most tournaments I play in are 9-round open tournaments with many IMs and GMs playing. Hopefully this trend will continue though since I plan on playing in more local events so that I can get more experience under my belt.

Aside from local events, I will still be playing in large open events and IM-norm tournaments too. My next upcoming tournament should be the Southwest Class Championship in Dallas, Texas during the middle of February. If any readers happen to play in that tournament then feel free to find me and say hello!

Until next time!

Chess Chatter

Discussion about this post