Tournament Performance Update
In the first blog, I wrote about my chess goal and how they were going, one of the goals was to break 1600 fide for the first time. My elo at the beginning of the year was 1524 and before I wrote that blog I had played my first rated tournament that year and I went from 1524 to 1499, so I went from needing 76 points to achieve my goal to needing 101 points, so an excellent start for the year kkkkk.
Since then I have played four more tournaments and made a comeback.
The nice one
In the first tournament, I got first place and got 26 Elo points. I implemented some things that helped me be more focused during the game like listening to a 4hz binaural audio which I have been using for a few months to focus when I work. I thought I would try it before games and I think it helped. I was feeling more calm and focused during the games. Another thing that I started doing was keeping a journal and writing how I felt during the games, but I plan to write about it in the next blog so stay tuned.
The one that was close
The next three tournaments were all part of the regional championship, the first two were qualifiers and the last one was the final. The final was a 6-player round robin and the 6 players were to be the current regional champion, the current veteran (50+) champion, and the top two for the qualifiers. So my goal in this tournament was to get some rating points and qualify in the top two.
The first four games went great, I even pulled an “O NO MY KNIGHT” in the third game kkkkkk. In the last round, I was in second place with 3,5/4 and I was playing against the player in first place with 4/4. Don’t let his rating below fool you, he is much stronger than that, my record against him before this game was, 2 wins, 1 draw, and 3 losses, (spoiler alert, it became 4 losses after this tournament).
So after the loss in the last round, I got fourth place. I didn’t qualify but at least I didn’t lose rating points.
The lucky one
Sometimes I don’t understand chess, In the previous tournament I thought I played well, but one mistake in the last round made me lose the chance to qualify, In this tournament, I played horribly and still managed to get second place and qualify. In the first two games, I don’t know how I won, I was making a lot of mistakes and played passively. The third one was the only one that I was proud of but even that was a draw.
Now if the god of chess exists, he was looking out for me in the fourth game, I was in a losing endgame down a knight and a pawn, and my opponent lost on time.
After drawing the last game I finished in second place, and finally qualified for the final.
The one with mixed feelings
I have mixed feelings about this tournament. I have been trying to win this tournament since 2021, and I lost the first game right away because of that my chances of winning first place were basically none, but the way I lost was also pretty brutal. I played super passively and my opponent destroyed me but after that, I started playing more aggressively in the other games, risking and attacking more, which I am not used to doing, I am more of a positional, boring player. But that change seemed to have worked. The week before this tournament ChessMood had their courses available for free and I did the one on attacking, so I was able to use what I learned on that in the other games, actually creating attacking plans instead of just waiting for my opponent to make a mistake, gain a pawn or two and going for the end game. I still enjoy playing like that but I think I can do that with a more active approach to the game.
But I was able to get second place and about 14 rating points on this tournament so it wasnt so bad.
In the last few months, I have been able to bounce back and I think I am now on track to hitting my goal of breaking 1600 this year, I will be around 1564 in next month's published ratings. I have 4 to 5 tournaments left this year so I need an average of 10 points a tournament, not counting setbacks.
It has been a while since I posted here but I’m planning on posting more regularly from now on, at least once a week, so stay tuned.