Weekend Tournament

I played in the Reverse Angle 15 tournament this past Saturday. This is a one day chess event that draws between 40 and 60 players for a three round swiss tournament with a game 90 format. As far as I know, it is one of the strongest one day events in North Carolina.

In my first round my opponent had the white pieces and lead us into a King's Gambit. This was the first time that I have played the King's Gambit OTB in a rated event. It was a strong start to a game with Mike making a blunder on his tenth move (1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. Nf3 g5 4. Bc4 Nb6 5. h4 g4 6. Bxf7+ Kxf7 7. Ng5+ Ke8 8. Qxg4 Nf6 9. Qxf4 Nd4 10. 0-0 Ne2+ and White resigns as he loses his queen.)

White could have made a few strong moves either the queen check, what I think is strongest or Rf1. What is really interesting here is that I ended up playing a King's Gambit online a little while before and even reviewed that game with some people that morning. The King's Gambit is an interesting game to play as it leads to some crazy attacks. Here is a link to the online game that I played earlier: http://gameknot.com/chess.pl?bd=12151132

I played very poorly in the next game and put myself in a losing position after about five moves. I know, how can someone get that close to losing in a just five moves. Well, here they are (and I was black) 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 f6 4. Bc4 Na5. Okay, it was four moves. The next two moves were 5. Bxg8 Rxg8 6. dxe5 fxe5 7. Qd5. Here I not only lose a piece, but I have no development and White is quickly bringing in attacking pieces. Moral of the story, on move 3, take the pawn. I knew that this was the correct move but wanted to try something flashy. Well, in a tournament, play solid. On one's spare time, try the something different to see what happens.

My last game was pretty interesting. It was a Grand Prix attack where I attacked before really getting my pieces together and my opponent just traded down all the material. It was a very tough end game where he made the last blunder and gave me a passed pawn. But, he didn't make this blunder until I made a few of my own. If anyone is interested in seeing this complex endgame, let me know and I will post the entire game.