OTB Tournament Report

Bouncing back from a difficult start

My most recent OTB tournament was a round-robin tournament with 7 rounds and each of them was played on a Monday night. The groups were divided by rating and my group ranged from 1700 to 1750 national rating (this should be around 1800 FIDE).
This was my third OTB tournament and since my first two went very well (at least result-wise), I was quite optimistic going into it.

In this post, I will only give the thoughts I had during the games and a detailed analysis of the games will follow in later posts.

Round 1

In the first round I was playing white and was very happy with the opening and after my opponent castled queenside, I felt that I should be much better.


White to play

However, in this position I played 17.b5? because I missed the simple and strong 17...Ba5 . Afterwards, I struggled a lot with my piece coordination and spent a lot of my time trying to solve the resulting problems. I ended up in a difficult endgame with pawn down and little time on the clock. In the end, I didn't manage to hold the game and lost my first round.

Round 2

Before starting the game, I didn't feel very well and couldn't concentrate for the first 15 minutes. But instead of slowing down and waiting until I felt better, I tried to play quickly which ended badly.


Black to play

In this position I played 7...Be7?? which was bad for a couple of reasons (7...a6 had to be played) but especially because my intention was to recaputre on f6 with the bishop. I didn't realise that the pawn on d6 would fall. I played on for quite a while, but was much worse during the whole game and also lost this round.

Round 3

My opponent didn't show up for the third round so I had more time to get over my two losses from the first rounds. I reflected a lot on my play and decided that I should only focus on playing better rather than on the result of the games or the tournament.
In round 4 I was playing against the tournament leader with black, so I knew that it was going to be a difficult game, but my only goal was to play well and don't think about my previous losses.

Round 4

In the fourth round I played quite well and managed to win a pawn with a tactic in the middlegame. After trading a lot of pieces we reached the following position:


Black to play

I saw that I could win the a3-pawn, but I thought (for some reason) that my king could never move to h7, so I didn't take the pawn because of 24...Qc1+ 25.Kf2 Qxa3 26.Qc2 Qxb4 27.Qc8+


Black to play
And here I thougnt that I had to play 27...Qf8 and white wins back the queenside pawns and my queen would be tied down to f8.

In the end we reached a bishop versus knight ending where I was still a pawn up, but couldn't make any progress and a draw was agreed.

Round 5

For the fifth round, my aim was to reach a solid and not too sharp position out of the opening. In peticular, I wanted to avoid a standard KID structure.


White to play

Black just played 10...e5 and I played 11.d5 thinking that black has to play 11...Na7 since I looked at this line when the e-pawn was still on e7. So to my shock, black played 11...Ne7 and I was pretty annoyed that I missed this move.

I wasn't too happy with the resulting position, but it is about equal and my opponent and I played quite well which lead to a draw.

Round 6

My opponent in the sixth round had only one point so far and I was playing white, so my goal was to finally win a game in the tournament. I felt quite comfortable out of the opening, but then I allowed a strong attack for my opponent. We reached the following position:


Black to play

I saw this position from afar and thought that it wasn't too bad for white. But I failed to evaluate the position correctly and black's attack is very strong. Luckyly my opponent didn't play accurately enough to use their initiative and allowed my king to run to the kingside. In the end, I had a tactic to win the game.
So in round 6 I finally got my first victory of the tournament after a very bad start.

Round 7

This was the last round and I wanted to end the tournament with another victory. My opponent sacrificed a piece for an attack which was objectively unsound, but very difficult to play for me. They managed to get 2 pawns for the piece and a dangerous passed pawn, so I decided to let them force a repetition and take a draw.


White to play
I played 23...Qxc2 on my last move, expecting my opponent to force a draw with 24.Qf7+ Kh7 25.Qf5+ and I was waiting for these moves and expected a quick draw. To my surprise, my opponent played 24.Bh5?? which lost to 24...Ng3+ 25.hxg3 Qxf5 .

Conclusion

I finished with 4/7 and was fourth in my group, which is a decent result. However, I am very unhappy with my play in the first two games and also got lucky in the later games.

From a chess perspective this tournament showed two big weaknesses in my play:

  • I have too many simple oversights in my calculation
  • I don't evaluate the initiative well