My shortest longest game of the tournament: Challenger's Cup Round 1
Photo not by me as I take everyone else's work rather than make my own. It's completely irrelevant, just like the actual post.
The Challenger's Cup (a big misnomer since I wasn't challenged at all, nor did I see any cups), an event that none of you readers know anything about, took place on the weekend of October 29-30, 2016, and was in two sections. The open section, which is the easiest one since anyone can play in it, good and bad alike, contained 30 chess players who were too scared to play in the reserve because that is where they can fall for traps and lose their easy-earned rating points. Also, they didn't want to face my scary so-called RAR attacks. Then there was the reserved section, reserved for good chess players, the ones who were under 1800, who were willing to go all out and do anything to win, including giving up their not so precious rating points and the scary and exciting opportunity to play me. There was also about 30 players in that section, which proves that only half of all chess players are brave enough to play me. It was held in the deadly basement of a 6 floor building in North Seattle, in the Seattle Chess Club, a popular place to play chess.
Now that I've explained the basics of the tournament and satisfied the people who are looking for details of the event, I can move on and hope to have a captivating hook, because I can't afford to buy bait.
"Dude, I think that one of my games lasted longer than all of your games [added together]", said one of the players after my last game ended.
"Really?" I asked. (By the way, I'm struggling to follow the rules of writing, such as where to put commas, periods question marks, and that every quatation must be in a separate paragraph).
My games had lasted a total of about 5 hours. Anshul claimed that one of his games lasted about that long. But why was this so impressive? Well, the time control was Game in an hour with a 10 second delay in the first round, but that ended up being my longest game. The time controls for the other games were 40 moves in 20 hours, (Note: In the comments some people pointed out that I accidentally said "20 hours". Oops. But I won't change my error, I'll let everyone make fun of me, maybe) followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game with a 10 second delay. For those of you who can't comprehend what that means, don't worry, you're just like me, I can't comprehend it even though I wrote it. In more "normal people" terms (I say "normal" because to me anyone who isn't a tournament player is crazy!), the first round was at a reasonable time control, while the other rounds were way too long.
My first round lasted around 90 minutes, while all of the other games were finished under an hour. My third round game took a little more than an hour, but only because my opponent showed up more than 10 minutes late out of fear of me. He was contemplating whether to play or not, and after 10 minutes his parents thought "I'm tired of my kid thinking of whether or not to play against this scary kid!", and they forced him to play. But he was really nervous. (This story may have actually happenned, it is impossible to prove that it did or didn't happen. He was 10 minutes late.)
Anyways, finishing all my games in 5 hours was very special. And everyone was surprised. Some people were impressed. "He totally wrecked me", one of my opponents said when asked about how his game went with me. Others asked how I played so well, and how I made both me and my opponent play so fast. And others.... well, I must say were irritated.
"Why didn't you play in the open section and give all of us a chance?", one of the participants asked me before the last round. Basically, she was complaining that I was playing too well! I guess that's a compliment. But there were others who were not going to congratulate me.
Another one of my opponents, who was also named Joseph, after winning a game against me in loser chess (You are forced to capture pieces if you can, and first to lose all their pieces wins), he told me that I sucked, and that he crushed me, even though in loser chess whoever was white always won. It didn't matter to him that I beat him in blitz, bullet, 3-check, King of the Hill, and in our tournament game. But when he got his only victory in a chess variant, he made sure to give me my due criticism (I didn't make fun of him at all, but losing too many games makes many players really mad). He also told me that by the time he was my age (he's in 4th grade now), that he would be better than me and would beat me. Thanks! Well, that wasn't very nice of him, so I told him "That hurts my feelings"! Instead of players being sympathetic, others were quick to say that "Your feelings don't matter", and that my feelings weren't actually hurt. When they said this I would complain and say that I don't want to hear the truth.
At one point, after saying my feelings were hurt, I complained that I was being discriminated, not because of religion, race, and whatever blah that is on those long forms that everyone has, but on basis of rating. However, everyone else decided that they could make an exception and discriminate against me. I guess that this is the exception proves the rule, which makes no sense but everyone is saying that saying recently. Since I don't talk sense it makes sense that I say it.
Now that I've explained my title as well as other random things well enough, I'll go back in time, since I want all of my tournament reports to be the same, and if I don't go back in time then it will be unique, and of course, being different is a terrible thing, it is expected that we all conform and be quiet during the tournament games and any act that was abnormal was instantly criticized.Before the event, I was given advice in how to do well in the tournament:
1. Eat well! Eat fruits, and chocolates are good before a game to get energy.
2.Use your time! Just because they move fast doesn't mean that you have to move fast! And lastly,
3. Focus. This may very well be my biggest problem. I never try to focus that much, and in this event, I managed to somehow play well anyways.
In the end, the only part of the advice that I might have followed was the food part. I ate two apples a day, and then came home and ate a big dinner at 9 in the night (Usually I go to sleep around 10 so it was very odd for me).
After being dropped off at home, I played more bughouse on chess.com, broke 1700 with Vikram, and finally decided that I wasn't preparing enough for the event! So I decided that rather than making random opening moves on the board, that I would plan my openings in advance. In the end, I decided that I would play 1.d4 as White, and then 1...Nc6 against everything as Black. I knew that 1...Nc6 is terrible, but since I was scared of theory that my opponents might have, I decided to "level" the playing field by giving them a clear opening advantage. It's unfortunate, but since I have played it 6 times, I probably can't play it anymore, since everyone will be prepared for it (I can already see Samuel trying to find the best way to gain an advantage against 1...Nc6!)
Obviously none of you were interested about my Friday, you are probably as interested as I was about my Friday (I don't care about my life at all!). But I needed filler to be boring and long. Now I will try to focus, something that I am bad at, about the tournament and what you are all waiting for.
As usual, I arrived at the event around 9:30. I waited for the players to come, and after enough chit chat, I was ready to play an interesting game, and saw that I was to play Aaron Fischer, an adult rated 1344. Surely my nearly 500 point advantage and playing white would prevail, right?
