A tale of a tournament: Seattle City Championship Day 1
It was the first Seattle Weekend Swiss of the year, and there was plenty of fake drama. Writes Joseph Truelson:..........
Joseph didn't know what to play. His opponent had a seemingly won game. Like he had done so many times before, he had blundered in the middlegame after his opponent played a gambit. He had to hope for his opponent to blunder. But the events leading up to this are good to mention.............
"Always so many buddies! I will have a great event!" Joseph exclaimed. He was always excited to see them all. And they came! He went with Alex Kaelin to the event, and saw many buddies at the tournament. Anthony He, Samuel Deng!, Andrew Jiang, Brandon Jiang, and the Tien siblings.
He went off in a usual lecture in the skittles room. (This is not word for word as I can't remember exactly what I said, this is a good estimate) "Well! So many buddies! Can't wait to get to know you all! As you know, I am the friendly and sociable Joseph Truelson, and you will all be my buddies; I call everybody(buddy) buddy! Keep playing chess, you will always have fun! I will help you have fun, because I am friendly and very humble! So... yeah... umm.. well yeah! Anyone want to do anything now? (silence), well... in that case I better give another lecture..." At some point, Jason Zhang was tired of all the talking from Joseph, and told him to shut up and stop being so annoying. This was met with shock from Joseph, who said that he hadn't critisized Jason, but Jason critisized him for no reason. A rivalry was in the making, and the two insulted each other, with Jason being more serious, but Joseph trying to be more funny. "You are hurting my feelings, I feel very sad" and "Really? Stop being such an idiot, like me". That dispute would be handled in Round 4, when the two were paired together. Or would it? See about that later...
Joseph got paired against the best Velea sister, the only one he had not played before, Anne-Marie and after this got had a 3/3 record against 3 velea sisters. However, due to G/60 and his tendency to time out his opponents, his play was rather bad.
Not too long after, he had to play his second round, against a player who plays the most events, at least it seems, Micheal Munsey!
Between rounds not much happeneed, other than the usual yelling as bughouse games were won and lost, and everyone complaining, as usual for no good reason. They were all crazy about the Seahawks, the next day they would watch a game of football at the chess tournament! Except Joseph. He just simply pointed out that none of the players are from Seattle, and "How can there be 5 million 12th men?" But of course, he was shunned. How could you possibly shame the immortal Seahawks. (OK wait, they are not that immortal, they did not win the Superbowl).
The critical third round was important. The winner of this game would be in first place going into Day 2. The other top board in the reserve section had Jason Zhang draw against Neal Bonrud despite being up a piece! "WHAT" Joseph yelled at Jason. "Now I have no hope." Some referencing to his english class, using a literary device called foreshadowing, Joseph was to play Neal Bonrod in round 5.
But in this round, Fate (i.e. SwissSys) paired him against David Juchau.
And that was a great first day for Joseph! He had 3 out of 3 going into day two, where he would play the aforementioned Jason Zhang and Neal Bonrud...
Meanwhile, in the unimportant Open Section, Nick Raptis and Nikita Chetari were tied for first with 3/3. They would play in Round 4. All the tension!
I'll try to post Day 2's blog soon!
