After reading so many posts on chess tournaments written by other chess bloggers and the encouragement of several friends, I finally made up my mind to check out what chess is really about: I played in a "real", over-the-board (OTB) that is, tournament at a local chess club. Here is the short message for all of you who don't have time to read the full post and play online only: it is fun to play OTB chess, go check it out yourself if you haven't done so.

I played in a 4 round swiss tournament with G/60 time control in the Boylston Chess Club. One nice thing with swiss chess tournaments for newbies like me is that there are usually people with widely varying strength playing in these tourneys. If you play against a stronger opponent in the first round and lose, you will be paired with another first-round "loser" in the second round, and so on. At some point, you will hopefully get a chance to win. And the ratings of the players in my first tourney were all over the place, indeed, ranging from an International Master at the top of the field down to a USCF rating of about 850 (not including unrated myself). The age distribution was equally diverse with kids, seasoned players well past retirement age, and everything in between present. Only women were clearly underrepresented, which is unfortunately not very surprising at chess events.

My biggest fear after playing online for about 1.5 years now was that all club players are much better than me. As a consequence, I started the first round nervously with the white pieces and promptly got in trouble right out of the opening - or so I thought. After analyzing the game, I figured that I merely thought my opponents had strong threats and weakened my position step-by-step while reacting to the phantom threats until I blundered once, twice, and resigned. If you are curious about the details you can play through this chess game.

In the second round, I defended with black against some kind of Reversed Stonewall Attack I've never dealt with before. I completely underestimated the power of White's attack and had to sacrifice my queen and a pawn for a mere rook just to stay alive. However, I got lucky at the end because my opponent played with blitz speed and gave me the opportunity for a one-move checkmate which I graciously accepted. Winning a game, even though by a swindle, instantly relieved all the pressure I put on myself by thinking that I am much worse than anybody playing in "real" tournaments.

Having the white pieces again together with an improved self-esteem let me build up a nice king-side attack against a young boy in the third round game. However, my opponent defended fiercely move after move and after sacrificing an exchange rook for knight my calculation proved to be wrong and my attack ran out of steam, giving him the opportunity to hit back at me (not literally, of course, as the general atmosphere in the club is competitive but very friendly). In the end, I got into time trouble and resigned after blundering. You can see some analysis of the game in the forum.

The last round paired me with Black against the lowest rated player of the tournament. I won a piece pretty early on but as usual I did not even notice that I have a material advantage until several moves later. It might sound a bit strange but may be I should get into the habit of counting my pieces regularly. I got lucky because my opponent overlooked the fact that I left a knight hanging for a while and resigned something like 10 moves later after I threatened to win more material by a discovered check.

Over all I am pretty happy with the result of my first chess tournament even though the quality of my play left much to desire and put me through an emotional roller coaster ride. Given some free time, I will play soon in more tournaments.

Comments (11)

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written by dwv16, July 14, 2007

Better than I did in my first tourney. Maybe I'll do better in my next. But it was still fun, and completely different from playing online.

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written by atomic patzer, July 14, 2007

Congratulations on your first tournament! Good score for your first time out! Now that you know what it's like any nervousness will go away. How is that BCC? Sounds like a good club. One fun thing about live tournaments - as opposed to online - is playing in a room with a bunch of others and getting to meet different players. Good luck for the next one.

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written by Sciurus, July 15, 2007

Thanks guys.

BCC seems to be a really good place to play chess. They have something going on almost every day. Too bad that my schedule is so unpredictable, otherwise I would play more often.

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written by chessloser, July 16, 2007

RIGHT ON! congrats on playing in the tournament, i'm glad you had a great time. maybe i'll see you at a tournament someday...

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written by Sciurus, July 17, 2007

Indeed, it would be great to meet some chess bloggers in person!

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written by Robert, July 18, 2007

Heartiest congratulations on a good experience and a good result. As I wrote recently I finished my first tournament at .5/14.5...I am inviting all chess bloggers to Reno for the Western States Open in October. I'll post on it soon.

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written by Sciurus, July 18, 2007

Thanks Robert! I am sure you will do better the next time. I would love to come to Reno to meet for some chess but I am afraid that paying for a flight ticket would exceed my chess budget by far.

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written by Robert, July 19, 2007

Just to clarify--that tournament was in 1980-1

Since then I've had my ups and downs, but all of them have been fun.

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written by Sciurus, July 19, 2007

Robert: Oops, my bad. May be I should not assume that everybody reading my blog is a beginner like myself...

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written by TommyC, July 27, 2007

Good stuff Sciurius. I suspect you'll find the sort of realism that OTB chess demands will really sharpen up your chess senses too.

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written by Sciurus, July 27, 2007

Hi TommyC,
does this mean that someday I may beat you in chess IF I go play OTB chess more often?

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