Border Battle 2009

Well, it was a long weekend at the Border Battle 2009 consisting of tough games from top to bottom. In the end the SC State Champion defeated by the NC State Champion by a score of 2.5 to 1.5 but the NC Scholastic champion was able to finally break the streak of three draws against his able opponent and pull out a win in the final round to finish 2.5 to 1.5. In the team match, where I played, we scored 29.5 to 18.5 claiming victory and bragging rights over SC until next years tournament.

Although NC did very well, less could be said about my personal results. I played in the Class C section against two SC players. On the first day of the tournament, I drew black against each of them but only managed one draw. The second day I played the white pieces and again was only able to squeak out one draw finishing my tournament with a score of 1 - 3. Not all that promissing.

However, the I did have the luck of rooming with a strong Expert from the NC group who went over my Saturday games. It is one thing to review every game that you play but I don't believe that really makes up for having a stronger player look at what you have done. After we were done, I believe that he provided me some very strong feedback that I will take to heart. That was that my tactics are very lacking and that I need to study them, alot. He also said that he new of a server where I could practice them. I did a quick google search and believe he was referencing the following site "http://chess.emrald.net". The strong advantage that he sees with this site is that it isn't just a solve for mate site so you can really learn what will be better for you as you play games and not just search for that final killing blow.

I'm working on annotating all of my games and will hopefully find a few more lessions that I can learn from these tough played games.