Another tournament

I played a 3-player 25+5 double round robin yesterday against two 1600 players. I went 3-1 to increase my rating another 10 points to 1740. All four games were a little sloppy; I really need to be more careful in the Qd8 Scandi. And CALCULATE AND THINK more. Still, if I'm doing this well against 1600s, maybe I really am playing at a 1700+ level?

Lichess study of the games with very minimal commentary.

Game statistics over the last year

I should perhaps wait until July, because at that point I would have been playing OTB again for a year, but here is a chart of my performance by rating level over the last 12 months (using post-tournament ratings).

As can be clearly seen, I need to lose more games. I am perhaps overrated at 1730, but there is no way to know that if I am playing only groups that I can score 75% against. It would be nice if I could play more tournaments, since 25 rated games in 12 months is not very much. I have gone on about it before, but one thing rapidly improving young juniors (and presumably other improvers) have in common is that they play a lot of rated games. Some of them play a tournament every weekend. Some can manage more than that, even. As for me, if you go back to when I was rated 1230, I have played eleven events to go up 500 points since then. And that is over the course of 20 years. In the graph, green indicates a period of inactivity greater than 3 months. Also note that I probably had not yet caught up to my actual strength in the 2011 spike.

Granted, in the last year I've played over 6000 games on lichess including an average of at least one 45+45 or longer game per week. However, I just cannot or do not take online games as seriously as OTB games. But I think they're helpful even if I don't do that. Both graphs courtesy of my USCF page.

Tournament report: how I went 4/4 and got over 1700

Crossposted to reddit:

TL DR: I went 4/4 in a tournament and got my rating over 1700. Games with comments here: Lichess Study of May Tournament Games Recaps below.

Recap: I played in a tournament in INDIANA this weekend. Four rounds of 60+10, my section would be the 1401-1800 section. If I had good performance, I'd make it over 1700, which is my goal for the year. Realistically, I hoped to play some people higher rated than me and get some good games in. I was the 9th seed out of 24 according to the signup sheet, so there was a good shot of at least that much. I was kind of surprised at the relatively low turnout to the event -- past events from this organizer had over 100 participants while this one was just short of 90. I suspect the conflict with the National Elementary Championship had something to do with it, but some of the missing usual suspects are older than that. Still a good turnout.

Round 1: since I'm in the top half of the pool, I knew I'd be playing down in at least the first round. It was an Indian kid in the 1500s, very nice. His live rating was actually higher than mine, but the pairings are based on the published ratings. This made me wary, since that's a sign of rapid improvement that might not be captured in the ratings. We played a semi-Slav, I got a little tricked in the opening into a slightly worse position. I sacrificed a pawn for some activity which the computer liked but didn't follow up right, then made a big mistake which my opponent missed too, instead deciding to give up a piece for three pawns. I then coasted to victory.

Round 2: there were enough upsets and draws that I ended up getting paired down again, this time against another Indian kid in the 1500s. Again, another very nice kid. I had Black and played the Qd8 Scandi, as one does. My opponent didn't really fight for the center at first, which is a mistake. Against the Qd8 Scandi, just be aggressive. Get your pieces out and take the center. We ended up trading all the minor pieces and, while I had a bad pawn structure, my opponent had open lines and a king in the center. He decided not to castle presumably because I would immediately attack, but getting stuck in the center was also bad. We traded queens and I got both rooks to the 7th. Done and dusted. 2-0.

Round 3: because of more upsets and draws, I played down again against... an Indian kid in the 1500s. Very nice kid, we had time to analyze after and he's really going to go far. We got a Trompowsky with g6 and I managed execute a typical plan: play on the light squares, expand on the queenside, limit the scope of the opponent's minor pieces particularly the g7 bishop. I had an edge but no clear victory in sight for a while until my opponent tried to counterattack with a pawn break on the queenside which just didn't work. I got a rook to the 7th, won a pawn, made an outside passer, and then just finished it off. 3-0. Man, I'm going to get picked up by CPS for beating all these kids.

Round 4: there were only two people with a 3-0 score at this point: Me and an adult 1500 who took the path I wanted. He played an 1800 and two 1700s and dispatched them all. Granted, the 1800 and one of the 1700s were floored, so perhaps not truly at that strength. I wouldn't be unhappy with a draw -- my energy level dictates how well I play and the fourth round of 60+10 in a day is a stretch for me -- but I'm not going to just give it away. We played a Qd8 Scandi, he seemed to know what he was doing, and I deviated from what I should play, instead going for opposite sides castling with the idea of dumping a box of pieces on his king before he could dump a box of pieces on my king. I saw something where it looked like I could bail out to a draw but gave opportunities for him to mess up and went for it. Unfortunately, I flubbed it after he did indeed make a mistake, so I was down a piece but his king was in the open and I had some initiative. Still, a few accurate moves and I'd be dead. And then... my opponent made a huge blunder and I mated him. He was stunned. 4-0! And I made it over 1700. My opponent also made it pretty close to 1700 based on his 3-1 performance, a draw probably would have bumped him over the threshold. Well, there's always next tournament!

Aftermath: got some cake, some bubbly, and boasted online. Next goal: 1800, but I'm not going to make it part of my goals this year. It's kind of funny that I made my goal of hitting 1700 by playing 4 people in the 1500s, but, that's the way the cookie crumbles. I'd say my best game was the third, I'm pretty happy with it apart from a couple minor points. The fourth shows I really need to work on my calculation and then I will never ever look at that game again. The first suggests the same and that I need to look at that line in the semi-Slav. The second, I don't know, there are just a few points in the game where I need to look at my decision-making.

And, man, I really need to play something besides the Qd8 Scandi but I keep winning with it.

Finally, a recap of the last 10 years of my chess playing.

When I went to grad school, I pretty much stopped studying and playing chess. Frankly, I probably should have picked it back up at some point, there's an active university chess club and no need to play rated games if I did not want to risk things while not in shape. It would've been a good social outlet.

At some point during the pandemic, I picked chess up again to play casually, then I decided to join the lichess 45 45 league, then I started studying again, and finally hopped back into tournament play. I think I started by watching Naroditsky's speed run series around December 2020. After that, I was watching other streamers playing chess, mostly smaller ones and not the big ones like Levy or Hikaru, but I quickly realized that... streaming isn't educational. I still hang out in these smaller streams occasionally, but it's more background noise in the evening and parasocial entertainment.

In the summer of 2021, being fully vaccinated and optimistic about how things were going, I got back into tournament play. My first two tournaments, I had mediocre results but gained rating, sitting in the upper 1400s, though I felt like I was on the cusp of doing better. Still, I was hoping to crack 1500, which I thought might be my skill level. In my third tournament, in December, I "popped off": 4/4, gained over 130 points, landing at a 1627 rating. I thought at this point that I had surely overshot my skill level. I beat a floored 1600, two 1500s, and a 1400 to get there, which may be consistent with a 1600 level performance, but it's odd to end up at a higher rating than anybody you beat. My goal for 2022, then: stay above 1600, hopefully get to 1700! I used the prize money to buy some courses on Chessable, picking up a d4 repertoire and some courses by Andras Toth.

My first tournament of 2022, I struggled a bit: I blew a win against an 1100 (taking a draw), completely blew a game against a 1470 who graciously offered a draw (wow!), swindled a 1300 who was stomping me in time trouble, and then stumbled into a draw against an underrated player who had me tricked in the opening. I ended up at 1601, so at least I had that going for me. My next tournament was a bit better: easy win against a 1300, winning position against an 1850 that I allowed to draw by repetition because of time trouble, dumb loss in a pawn endgame against a 1770 kid, weird tactical victory against an 1400. Gained a few points, 1700 performance rating, so maybe I really am at a 1600 level.

I went into the tournament this weekend with modest goals: play good games, play against some higher-rated opponents, stay above 1600. It was a U1801 section and I was the 9th seed out of 24, so there was a good shot of that. The result was only partially true: I did not play anybody higher rated than me. Because of upsets and draws, even though I was the 9th seed, I ended up being paired down each round while going 4/4. Final rating: 1730. Here I think I definitely overshot my mark. I'm not going to avoid playing to protect my rating or anything, but I definitely think this shows that, okay, I'm definitely at least a 1600 if I can dispatch people rated around 1600 reliably.