Last Saturday I played in the 5 NCGP Points Today #1 tournament. It was a four round G/65 tournament that only cost me a dollar to play in. You can beat four rated games for a dollar. The only prize fund were the rating points that you could earn and North Carolina Grand Prix Points. I had a pretty good day drawing against a 2000 rated player, winning against a 1700 and 1500 player and only taking one loss against a 1900 rated player (who also tied for first in the event).
Overall I gained 75 rating points to put me solidly in the Class B catagory with a rating of 1650.
I had two really interesting games. My draw agains Dan Lie (2000) and my loss against Mike Williams (1950ish). In my game against Dan (see below) I was able to get to a good position and had to settle for a draw becuase of some bad positional play but the key thing that I saw when reviewing this game was that we both failed to look at some major weaknesses in my king position.
So, my learning point is that when a weakness is seen, even thought I cannot attack that weakness in one move I need to look deeper to see if there is a way to leverage it. I have my notes in the game so please let me know if anyone sees anything better.
I'm still looking at my other game that I lost due to a massive blunder. At the time of the blunder I was able to get to a position where I had two bishops and a knight against my opponents queen. Once I have that picked apart I might post it here as well.
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