Thoughts On Guelph

The Guelph Winter Pro-Am Chess Tournament was well-organized and interesting. Since there were a few 1900-2000 rated players playing in the open section, I was slightly closer to the top of the U2000 section than I expected to be. All of my games were interesting, which is not always a good thing for a defensive minded player such as myself. I finished on 3.0/5.0, but considering my opposition and the positions I had I could have extracted more. I have to wait two days to see my new rating, but I will not be surprised if I drop to somewhere around 1840.

I have to use the word "disjointed" when describing my play, as there were numerous incidents where I had a solid plan but failed to execute it because I was caught up in the excitement of the game. With a breif check of Rybka, it appears that I gave too much credit to my opponent's threats when I should have been completing my development and finding the best squares for my pieces. However, the experience I gained here will serve me well, and I will surely find in the future that there are less wrinkles in my game.

I finished the tournament with two wins, two draws, and one loss. I believe that my most instructive game was the loss though, even though it was not the most fun for me. Credit goes to my opponent Israel Crooks for putting his faith in the concept of initiative and being the first person in my chess career to really break my Caro-Kann (Jessse Wang ended up worse out of the opening; I just blundered in time pressure). I will annotate the game shortly, however I am not at home at the moment so I do not have the game score or the diagram software. Mention must be made of my "thrilling" draw against Terry Song (I say "thrilling" because it was certainly uncomfortable for me- at one point I was dead lost but he missed the win. The game ended when he gave perpetual check in the face of mate in two) and I also must express my surprise to encounter the French Defence all three times I had the white pieces! Fortunately (luckily) I had spent a long time on French Defence preparation before the tournament because I felt it was a weakness of mine. Interestingly, it was the only opening I had perpared before the event.

Overall, it was a good tournament (even though I did not play well) and I feel confident about my ability to climb the ratings ladder. To my knowledge I finished somewhere in the 5-7 range of about 18 people. I will need to confirm this on Wednesday though. I also believe that Artiom Samsonkin won the Open section with 4.5/5.0. My annotated game should be up shortly.