So I went and played a local rated tournament tonight. It's a weekly thing here in Atlanta -- at the Atlanta Chess Center. The last tournament I played was in 1998, literally. I took a huge break from chess, and now I've decided to get back into it. I'm no prodigy, I just do it because it's fun. Anyway, the tournament tonight was at the same place I played 10 years ago. It's weird to walk into a building you haven't been in for a decade. It looked exactly the same.

The tournament was 3 rounds, I'm unrated so I was paired up randomly. My first game was against a 9 year old named Benjamin (who's rated like 1800+). I started off pretty strong and it was equal throughout the midgame, then I got mated not paying attention. My second game was against a gentleman named Augustus and I lost that one too. I felt like I had a good game going against him, and for some reason I made THREE blunders in a row. Three. First I left my queen out in the open, so he snatched her up. I then continued to leave my bishop and rook out in the open for the taking, so they died too. I won the third game, it ended up coming down to rook vs. rook and a couple of pawns. I queened a pawn and he resigned. 

So, all in all I enjoyed it. I think it was a little bit of a shock to have to annotate my games while I played, (I forgot that's how they do it at tournaments) and also to have a clock while playing. I'm a little too used to the leniency of these online games and playing in person was a bit uncomfortable. But, I'm gonna go back next week I think so I should be getting used to it. We'll see what happens!