Challenge 2500 | 2. Damage Control

Intro

First things first. Happy new year!
I'm writing this week's blog entry on my way to Southern Germany (Schwäbisch Gmünd in Baden-Württemberg to be precise), where I'll compete in my first tournament of the year.
It's not the first one of this project though, as I've played a 7-round tournament in Bremen this past week.

As a quick note to potential new readers who have no idea what this blog is about, feel free to check out the introductory entry at https://lichess.org/@/iakov98/blog/challenge-2500--0-intro/a2a0zfLJ. The idea, simply put, is to continuously document the training and tournament play connected with my attempt of taking my classical FIDE rating of around 2400 eventually to the defined goal of 2500 (whether I have it in me to reach this goal is very much unclear, but if at some point I do have to admit to myself that I don't, I want to be able to say that I've tried).

Back to the actual content of this blog. Starting with a general assessment of my performance, these are the cold, hard facts of the matter: a performance of 2324, a change in FIDE rating of -4.5.
Let's answer these questions:

1. Am I happy with the result?
2. Am I happy with my quality of chess?
3. What went right, what went wrong?

To answer (1), no chess player is ever going to be pleased losing rating points, obviously.
And quite often, if the answer to (1) is 'no', the answer to (2) will be 'no' as well.
That's not always the case though. Indeed, in this case I am actually very much content with the quality of chess I was able to bring to the table.
I'll try to answer (3), arguably the crucial question when it comes to learning and improving, after briefly reviewing how the tournament went round by round.

The Tournament

Let me quickly acknowledge how well the tournament was organised. The organisers (https://imperialchess.org/) provided excellent playing conditions, it was really fun playing chess there.

If you just want to look at a chess board, scroll down, I've created a study containing my games or in some cases, only parts of them.

Now, as is typical for swiss-format tournaments, in the first round, the rating differences in the pairings are quite pronounced, and then tend to diminish from round to round. As my starting rank was 3/62, rounds 1. and 2. were must-win games, that is, games where one would lose a bunch of rating even from a draw.

In my experience, the very first round can be a bit shaky, and indeed, my game was the longest of the round and took me 82 moves, but I did manage to win in the end, converting my B+N vs. R advantage.

The second round was relatively smooth from start to finish and was finally decided in a nice zugzwang-type position.

In the third round, I had the black pieces against a FM with 2269. This is a bit of an awkward pairing, since on the one hand, my opponent is clearly a very capable player, but on the other, the rating difference is not insignificant either. In such games, my approach is to prioritise not losing and to take chances when they come instead of big risks.
My opponent played very solidly though and the game never left drawing margins. All in all, a slightly annoying round, but a high-quality game and a fair result. At this point, the tournament was going 'as expected'.

Then, I lost to the talented von Mettenheim, an up-and-coming player from my club. I was pressing in a pleasant endgame for a long time and managed to achieve a more or less winning position. Having played far too slowly throughout the game though, a time scramble ensued and I started making critical errors. In our mutual time trouble, my opponent punished those mistakes mercilessly and deservedly won the game.
These sort of losses are very tough to deal with. Besides feeling awful on their own, they more or less ruin the whole tournament, at least regarding the result. It can be difficult to motivate oneself to take the following rounds as seriously as the previous ones.

In the fifth round, I had black against a 2106 and I needed a win to bounce back. My opponent played well for a long time and so I had to try to win a very dry endgame, which I managed to do after a long grind.

The sixth round was another must-win game, white against 2132. By winning this game, I would be in a decent position to sort of salvage the tournament and come out without needing to rename this project 'Challenge 2400'.
My opponent played the opening a bit inaccurately and I obtained a clearly better position. A nice tactical shot decided the game in my favour.

The seventh round I consider my best game of the tournament, even if it wasn't a win. I was paired with Black against a talented young player around my rating (meaning that his actual strength is probably quite a bit higher).
I surprised him in the opening and was well prepared, getting an equal, but complex position, in which I was trying to create chances. My opponent played very accurately though and the game ended up being very level throughout. It turns out that even under the strict inspection of Mr. Stockfish 14+, no mistakes or inaccuracies werde made. An average centipawn loss of 4 according to the Lichess analysis.

Here are the the games (or parts of them), click through them at your leisure:

Chess-results page for the tournament: https://chess-results.com/tnr707723.aspx?lan=0&art=1

Bottom Line + Outlook

All in all, I feel very much in form despite the less-than-ideal result. 6 out of the 7 games were of decent to very high quality, and the one culprit, the loss in the forth round, was well-played up until a certain point deep into the late middle game (the rest of the game was absolutely abysmal to be fair).
Answering question (3), two things to improve in particular come to mind:

• Be more trusting my calculation and/or intuition in order to be able to play more quickly. Second-guessing every variation and ending up in severe time pressure is just bad.
• Play better in time scrambles. It feels like I play worse than in random blitz games, which seems to make no sense whatsoever, I don't even have 30 seconds increment in blitz.
  There is probably some psychology as to why that is the case. Anyway, the level I displayed in that last stretch of round 4 should not repeat itself.
  I wonder whether there is some training method other than playing blitz games to become a better player in time scrambles. Of course, in casual internet blitz, the pressure and nerves are much less than in a serious OTB time scramble, but how could one simulate the stress in a training setting?

To summarise: avoid time trouble as much as possible, but play well when I do find myself in it. Simple enough.
So, what went well?

• Overall, decent calculation (although there is much room for improvement still), precise play most of the time
• Openings were good enough (there is always some luck involved when it comes to the opening stage to be fair, as you can't make your opponent play what you want them to play. Being well prepared broadly does minimise the possibility of 'bad luck' though)
• High quality pressing in equal to slightly better positions

On that positive note, let's call it day for this entry.
Although, let me just mention this quickly: I'll have to carefully think about how to choose tournaments to play. In general, I believe that competing against tough opposition is the best way to improve, so I'll try to play 2-3 strong 9-round opens this year. This is not an easy task though, since they are usually quite consuming, both time-wise and financially, requiring lots of travel etc. But that might be something to expand on another time.

For now, as mentioned, I'm back at the board soon, which is tomorrow. I am very much inspired to play well, I'll try to prove myself over the course of those 9 rounds.
Link to the tournament: https://www.staufer-open.de/anmeldung/teilnehmerliste-a-open

Thanks for reading and until next week. After this tournament, there will be regular training for a good two weeks at least as I'll try to make another step toward becoming a better chess player.
Cheers!