My (awful) performance pt. 3 of 3
Submitted by on Thu, 09/04/2008 at 4:18pm.
This was my best day at the tournament, which is strange because I had a headache all day and I was exhausted from not getting enough sleep all weekend. My first game was a draw and my second game was a win. So my overall record at the end of the tournament was 2-2-2. (1-1-1 with white, 1-1-1 with black).
My first game was a sicilian (dragon?) I don't really know the names of any of them, I just sort of play what looks good. It looked very drawish to me and eventually we did draw, but I think my last move before the draw was a blunder that my opponent could have capitalized on. He was an 12 year old asian kid from beaverton or somewhere. His name is Austin Nguyen and he was pretty funny as I talked to him between rounds 5 and 6. We went over our game briefly and played a lot of blitz.
My second game of the day started at 3:15ish against a player who looked exactly like Donald Sutherland. I thought this while we were playing, and I wondered if he was researching a role or something, or if he had an alias he used to escape from publicity. I decided not to tell him that I thought he looked like D. Sutherland as I assumed my synapses were misfiring and I had forgotten what he really looked like. Anyway, we played a game that was by far my best game of the tournament.
Shortly in the opening, I got a center pawn of his isolated, and spent another 15-20 trying to win in. After I won this pawn, I started trading away pieces until I was in a spot to win another pawn and he blundered into checkmate. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
While I wish I had won more, as my loses were both on the part of me missing the winning moves, I had a good time at this tournament, and I expect that the next one that rolls around, I will do better at. I plan on making flash cards of various opening lines and memorizing them, I plan on playing some long games just to get used to it, and getting more sleep.
I hope you enjoyed my coverage of my 6 games at the 2008 Oregon Open. And may the muses smile on you.
edit: today in the mail, I got a check for 60$. Which means I got my entry fee back! That is pretty good for me, as 60$ was the max unrated players could get.