Hey guys, took me a while, but I finally typed up a tournament post for the zonal. Abit over a week ago, I travelled to NZ for the zonal, an international tournament. It's my second big international tournament ever, the last one being the previous zonal where I got my
CM (Candidate Master) title. I was
aiming higher this time, for FM (FIDE Master) and the thread goal, I end up falling short but learnt ALOT from my games and tournament preparation in general and genuinely had a great time at the beautiful country.
So the tournament had it's up and downs. It was a swiss tournament. I started off fine, winning my first round game in quick fashion. I drew my second round against a friend (he's now an FM) in a probably better position (see below). It was probably
my best game of the tournament, in terms of opening preparation and positional play. I lost my third round game horribly to a pretty well known CM. I basically relied on outdated prep and fell into his lines, managed to claw back to a draw endgame before blundering a pawn.
The fourth round is where it went downhill. I played one of my closest chess friend and was crushed out of the opening where he and his room mate out prepped me. We played like 16 move of prep before I
misplayed the move order in a classical Caro Kann and allowed him a massive attack on my kingside where I had no counterplay. The fifth round ended in a quick draw.
The sixth round went pretty badly too, something went wrong with my prep against the Caro Kann Panov where I mixed up the plans in my line and I quickly got into a losing position. I was throughly outplayed but I ended up drawing a rook endgame a couple of pawns down in a spectacular fashion.
With no more chance for 6/9 and the FM, I played some creative games in the last two round. I did a
pretty creative but unnecessary positional sac in the eighth round to lose a better position. I played a pretty sharp game against an overseas friend to give him a chance for a win (which he needed for the CM) and won that, much to his disappointment.
I ended up with a
pretty disappointing 4.5/9 (which would have been enough for a CM had I not already got it). But I did feel my practical strength improved alot nevertheless.
This was probably the easiest zonal in recent memory, with over 100 entrants, a few of the FM-elects only put up 2200+ rating performance to get that 6/9 (with the help of a lucky swiss draw) for the soft titles. And given the
new rating requirement for future direct titles (e.g. from zonal or olympiad) and the
next zonal being held in the middle of the pacific ocean, I would think there will only be strong fields.
Ofc I'm not that sad (just a little bit), binking a FM from a soft zonal would be kinda a cop out to this thread anyway. Where the goal should be achieving that 2300 strength and rating the good old fashion way, rather than doing good in a tournament and becoming a 2000 rated FM (lol).
After this tournament, I recognised
alot of my weaknesses and have since taken steps to addressed them. Had a session with an IM, but didn't really learn much from his analysis. He only briefly looked at the game and didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, except for
"don't play such hard lines without practice in a big international event like this".
I tried to contact Yasser Seriewan for coaching since he played a very similar repertoire to mine, but he doesn't do international skype lesson unfortunately. So if any 2300+ interested in a student lemme know :P
Ok, so I learnt quite a few important lessons from this tournament. Lets start with the practical lessons first, then the chess lessons.
Practical Lessons
1. Fatigue and fitness
Health is a huge thing for these big classical tournaments IMO. Games can go up to hours and you have to play 7 days straight. The two round days are especially brutal and can determine someones tournament performance. I got abit sick during the tournament I'm sure that affected my performance. A few other players got sick and I'm sure one of my friend (who got 5.5) missed out on the 6/9 needed for the FM because of that. Especially going to a new country with a crazy climate like NZ, being prepared is key - taking care of yourself and eating well.
2. Repertoire experience
Alot of my worse games (and lost games) were Caro Kann lines, despite my pre-tournament preparation. I will show some of those games in a later posts. I think not having previous big tournament experience with the Caro and having an incomplete repertoire and superficial understand was also the issue. While the opening is solid, you still need to play accurate to equalise.
3. Database and preparation
Another issue was while my friends had the 2016 chessbase and lived in a big house together where they can prepare as a team, I was living in a hotel by myself with an old chessbase database where I mainly looked for my opponents games on a public site like chessdb.
Having a group of friends to work with certainly helps the morale as well as make things easier.
Chess Lessons
1. Tactics and Calculation
I think with many other sub 2300 players, a big part of our weakness is calculation and tactical strength. In fact that's probably the biggest part to being a strong player. Alot of juniors in the scene were able to climb the 2300+ ladder in very short time (with some K factor assistance). And while their opening understand and positional chess were ok, their tactical vision and calculation skill were exemplary. The stereotype of highly tactical rising juniors is definitely true. Even if you can play well positionally and gain an edge, without good calculations skills, converting advantageous positions is very hard. The same goes for fighting back or defending in worse positions.
A big part of my training from this point on will be about building my calculational ability and visualisation skills like in Michael de la Maza’s Rapid Chess Improvement. I will mainly be using Aargard's Grandmaster Preparation book.
2. Opening
Opening preparation was something that let me down, which was surprising considering the effort I put into my lines. My English games were fine, and my Semi Slav lines were largely untested. But being unluckily enough to have 5 black games, my Caro Kann were put to the test and unfortunately, I did pretty badly. I will show some of the games on future posts. I think I got my worse positions out of those. I think my understanding of the lines were still somewhat superficial (I tried to play a pawn down line against the Panov with the wrong Qb6 plan, and I basically misunderstood Ng4 idea in one of my Classical Caro games).
3. Spazzing out
Although I think I played some good moves in my games, I also played some really spastic moves. I ruined some good positions with a "stroke of inspiration" out of nowhere only for me to find out later that they aren't that good. I think calculational ability is important to back up these kind of moves.
For example
in this position I played Nxf5?!. It was pretty unnecessary and many other moves would've kept the pressure and advantage. This while looks nice with the follow up of
e4-e5, Qd4 etc doesn't really offer concrete winning chance and I'm actually just down a piece and it's probably better to keep my options open. Ofc playing too much blitz was one of the things that lead me to play these kind of moves.
Nxf5?! is interesting but ultimately has no concrete follow up except for pressure. Black can defend accurately and just be up a piece.
I got
a couple of games from the tournament I want to show, both ones I played well or badly. But given the size of this post, I better save a game analysis for a future post. Especially since I have
a Weekender tournament to play tommorow. Hopefully I can spend more time to analyse them after before making a high quality game analysis post.
But I will leave you with my second round game (will do analysis for a future post). Also got some scenery pictures I want to upload later, the country has beautiful scenery.
Second round game (I'm white)
http://www.chessvideos.tv/chess-game....php?id=109424
1/2-1/2