Me vs. the prodigies: SCC July Tornado Rounds 1-2
According to my English class, (horrible teachers) a way to captivate the reader is to start with something confusing, or at the end of the story, and then you go back in time and describe everything. So maybe I'll give that a try, and once I'm criticized in the comments, I'll do it even more!
After a terrible last round, I called my parents to pick me up. "How did you do?", my dad asked. "Pretty bad", I replied. In the half an hour that I waited for my parents, I was horrified (not in reality, but I have to be dramatic if anyone is going to read my stuff) by reviewing my last round game. Something wrong had happenned. I went over the game again to confirm what had happenned. I couldn't believe it. My opponnent had... (With that interesting hook you will for sure read this terrible blog!) Even worse for the reader this incident won't be covered until my next blog!
My whole life I had been winning lost positions, but on that fateful Sunday the opposite happenned, I lost in winning positions. Lots of things were different from the previous week. For one thing, the time control was G/60, and I handled it in the worst way possible. The games I won, I didn't think enough, and the games I lost, I took too much time. I had a terrible thought process and wasted too much time not actually analyzing my positions. If unused time carried over to other rounds I would have done much better. Simply put, Game in 60 isn't best for me.
Even the first round, against a Velea sister (Stephanie), I made the horrible mistake of playing an opening I didn't know! I'm finding out a lot of obvious information about what not to do in chess that everyone else my level knows, so I must be in trouble.
I made the (non)-fatal mistake of filling a cup of water and pretending that I was going to throw it at somebuddy. Unfortunately, I accidently dropped some water on someone, and after that it was everyone against me. I got drenched with water, a lot more than anyone else, and the fight started, basically I ran away from them, got some water from the drinking fountain and they ran away from me. In the end I decided we were being too immature and told everybody that we weren't allowed to have so much fun, so it stopped. But of course we could have some level of fun, with the swivel chairs! The high demand for this ride continued, but when I got near the elevators everyone got scared that I was going to lock them in the elevator and they would jump out and run back to the skittles room. Then they would want another ride (?).
Perhaps having so much fun hurted my play for the next round. I didn't bother to eat anything, because I wanted to have fun, and I was hungry for the rest of the tournament. I guess that means that I shouldn't have as much fun. (Recommended by many players) It appears that during a event I don't care if I play that well, but then I spend hours preparing for the next event. Oddly enough, the time I care most about winning at chess is outside of the event.
Lots of things were off about my next game with the talented Vikram Ramasamy (Rated 2072). I was hungry, and was kind of scared by the higher rating, which led me to doubt my calculations at one point in the game. But luckily, the opening went ok for me, thanks a lot to Sammy! (I should not have changed my openings in the last round)
Opening
Middlegame and Endgame I think this might already be an endgame, but I'm not sure. I don't know the definition of an middlegame. It kind of mixes together in this game. Anyways, I failed myself after playing well for a while.
Don't worry, my play only got worse from here. (Who knows when Round 3-4 will be posted, maybe before the Seafair this weekend) Notice that I was originally going to post all the games in one blog, thus the name of the title, but as usual, I decided against it at the last moment since I'm lazy and can't spend 2 hours at a computer typing and writing. (This blog did take an hour to write!)
