North American Open 2024: a rough start

Day one

The tournament began at 6pm on December 26th. I had the white pieces for round one and I opened with 1.e4. My opponent answered with the unexpected 1...g6. The surprise caused me to spend a lot of time in the opening. Then on move 15 my opponent played a move that allowed me to win a piece ,but he played the move so quickly I wondered whether I should even take the piece. I recalculated the line several times and then took the piece. He ended up getting 3 pawns for the piece. I later gave back the piecel to get an attack on his king going, and towards the end of this game I had just 13 seconds left on my clock and a couple of moves to make the control. We were playing with a 30 second delay but it's still tough with just 13 seconds on the clock. BTW the time control was 90 minutes for the first 40 moves and then 30 minutes for the rest of the game. There was also a 30 second delay throughout the game. Anyway, let me show you the game.

My Opponent's buddy was watching the game and as soon as the draw was agreed he pointed out that 39. g4 would have been checkmate. It is a shame I missed this mate in one. This would have been my best game if I had seen the simple mate.

Day two

Round 2

So after 3 rounds I had just half a point to show for my efforts. I felt the need to take my mind off of chess, so I played poker in the Casino for a while and then went and got ice cream....well it actually was gelato, which is a fancier, tastier kind of ice cream. There were a lot of interesting flavors available. The one I chose was Hazelnut with pistachios. The ice cream stand was on the Las Vegas Strip and the energy of the strip also helped my mood. By the time I got back to my hotel room the two losses were a distant memory.