A Good Weekend

I played in a one day, three round tournament yesterday and had a good day.

This tournament is very healthy and had 50 players attend in four sections. I played in the under 1800 section since my rating is 1526. In the first round I was paired with 1770, second 1616 and last 1630. (I'm estimating the rating on the last two games.)

The first game I played was great. I made good solid moves. Put my pieces on good squares and when the time came, made a very strong queen move that ensured my win. Or at least put me into a very strong and aggressive position. I'm going to sit down and annotate this game and possibly post it here later. (It takes me two to three hours to review one of my games so it might take me a few days.)

After this however, my level of play dropped. My second game, I don't know what I was thinking. In the opening I made a questionable decision to trade my bishop for a knight and then I decided to chase my opponents knight with all my pawns thinking I could win the piece. Well, i was wrong about winning the piece and then when the dust settled all my pawns were on bad squares and I just lost.

The thrid game went quickly to an end game that was hard fought for about 50 moves. I believe that my position was more sound but then, I made a bad pawn push which allowed my opponent to attack with his queen putting me on the defense. He went up a pawn but again I made some great moves and retook the advantage. Only to draw the simple pawn-rook endgame. Oh well, everyone has their days I guess.

In the end, a win against a very strong Class B player and a draw and lose against average Class B players. Overall, great progress for me. But we will have to see how things end up.