Greetings players and fellow patzers 🙂
My latest congress was held this past weekend, similar formats to previous ones,
5 rounds, each game with time controls 80 mins + 30secs increment per move.
I played in the "Knights" section, for players graded Under 125.
(my current grade is 105, although I believe this should be higher)
How did I fare this time around?
---------------------
Game 1 - Patrick Sartain (119) vs Zak Tomlinson (105)
The opening game has not been lucky for me in all previous tournaments so far this year...
will my losing streak continue, or can I stop the rot and get off to a good start?
Game 3 - Zak Tomlinson (105) vs Sanjoy Banerjee (122)
I had the good fortune of having 2 consecutive White's on Saturday.
Having played in the morning against one of the tournament's lower rated players,
I now find myself against one of the section's top rated players in the afternoon.
It was an interesting game, with no certainty at any point regarding the result,
then something peculiar happened in the below position:
See the below game to find out what events transpired!
Here's the link to the Doncaster tournament as mentioned Thread 176586
Scroll to game 5, which follows a similar path to this game.
Game 4 - Chris Lysons (114) vs Zak Tomlinson (105)
This game had a very unusual opening, so unusual that I only need to go as far as move 4
on redhotpawn's database before I see "No games in this line".
Post-mortem analysis with a computer also proved to be rather embarassing,
no doubt for both of us... the game had blunders galore!
See the game below to witness the comedy of errors we made.
Game 5 - Zak Tomlinson (105) vs Julian Hawthorne (119)
Sitting on board 3 in the final round,
I needed a full point to have a chance of winning something substantial, if at all.
What did the tense final round have in store for me?
-----------------------------------
So, after 5 rounds I managed to SOMEHOW finish joint 1st,
taking home a cheque with a value of £292... not too bad at all.
Patrick, whom I had lost to in the 1st round, was one of the 2 guys I shared 1st with.
Here's the results crosstable for those interested:
http://chess-results.com/tnr371062.aspx?lan=1&art=4
So that's that.
Anybody who says there is virtually no luck in chess has clearly not played enough over the board!
I hope you guys enjoyed the games and maybe learned something from them,
even if the lesson was "don't play the French" (3 games, 3 losses!)
My next tournament will be in Scarborough at the end of October... maybe see some of you there?
http://www.scarboroughchesscongress.org.uk/downloads/scarborough-entry-form-2018.pdf
Cheers all,
Zak
p.s. I forgot to mention that in the final round, both games either side of me on boards 2 & 4 ended in a draw.
Because of this, all 4 players finished half a point behind me.
If either game won, we would have had to split the money 4 ways or even 5 ways... lucky lucky lucky!
Originally posted by @greenpawn34Cheers guys,
Good set of games. Typical OTB nerves and blunders mixed in with some good play.
you have to keep playing though them to see what is going to happen next
.
Congratulations and good luck at Scarborough.
Playing through OTB games for analysis is a nightmare.
I couldn't believe how bad game 4 was,
my opponent should have won that game I reckon 4 times over.
My last two tournament performance ratings have been above 140,
so I feel as though I'm headed for higher rated sections soon enough.
It's all good experience... and of course good fun.
Cheers,
Zak