Few small observations I made playing OTB chess

1) There is something very primal about the feeling you get when moving up and down the boards in between rounds.

At this tournament, this was even further pronounced by the conditions of the set-up. Boards 1-70 were in a space with air conditioning, in the main playing hall, while the others (71+) were in a space without such feature, some other Caissa forbidden room.

This was all important because the very first day, I was playing at one of these boards between 60-70 and the weather forecast for the next two days was scorching hot. Those stakes for round 1 could not have been any higher, as neither of us wanted to be bounced to the hot rooms for patzers unworthy of air conditioning.

I did manage to stay within the boards 1-70 for all tournament, which is probably my biggest success.

But even beyond the air conditioning, I do feel there is something very territorial about the feeling you get, when you are assigned to higher/lower board as the tournament goes, based on your results. It is the physical manifestation of the quality of your moves, after all. Between rounds 2 and 3, even though I won my game in round 2, I got assigned to lower board for round 3 (due to nature of the pairings) and I was somewhat disappointed – like I was wronged by the universe somehow.

I wonder how many people relate to this irrational attachment to their board placement.

2) There are some unique feelings you might get when interacting with other people in an u1700 OTB tournament. Here are some examples:

a) After you finish a game, a player wants to talk about it and starts talking about „how he was afraid of the situation on f6 square“, maybe even giving some lines. Since you suck at visualization and calculation and chess in general, you dont even know where f6 square is. You feel awkward, so you just nod your head and smile and go: „Yeah that was tricky I am gonna check that with the engine later." If the opponent continues, you just need to vary the phrase lightly, change the word here and there until it hopefully comes to an end, and you can run to safety.

b) Then there is aggression kicking in when a 10 year old you are playing gets a tactic off against you and when he does, he slams the piece down super loud. There is this urge at that moment to smack him around and say “Hey buddy, why you are so happy, we still both suck” or maybe go for the measured “Hey, this is just a game of chess, you don’t have to act like a maniac, you know” But as the game unfolds and ends and you see the opponent, you realized he is exactly just that – a kid. You cant blame 10 year old for being immature after all.

c) But then you have the other coin – you meet someone who is surprisingly nice. In the last round, I played a miniature against a player who was circa 300 points higher rated – I won in 17 moves after he missed a tactic out of the opening. This was an older gentleman (though not that old, think like 55-60 maybe). After he resigned, he offered me his pen (which was Czech Open branded, it had the tournament logo) saying I can keep it as a memory for the tournament. I was taken aback a bit – I understand the pen for him was worthless, he has too many of them and would probably throw it out anyway. But still, I found this gesture nice – so maybe I will keep it.

Not as a memory of the tournament, bus a token for remembering to stay nice when playing chess – I think that’s what it could remind me of.

Those are some of my observations from my summer return to low level OTB.