Challenge 2500 | 6. On The Podium!

I'm writing this entry just after the award ceremony of the 7-round tournament that finished today.
Here's the link: http://www.chessorg.de/nwcup.php
Unexpectedly, I placed third, this time having some luck on my side regarding tiebreaks. I almost felt bad for it, but thankfully this tournament uses the Hort System (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hort-System (no English wiki sadly)) for prize money distribution, which means that the earning differences among the top-scorers are much less pronounced, which I'm a fan of.
In any case, let's look at the facts of my result: a performance rating of 2445, a rating change of +3.
All in all, I'm quite happy with the result even though (or precisely because) the tournament didn't go quite according to plan at a couple of instances.

The course of the tournament

In round 1, I managed to win a nice game with white against a young 2014-rated player.

But then, I could not show anything special against my opponent in the second round with black, even though the rating difference was still quite large (he was rated 2075). We went into an endgame quite quickly where I was hoping to outplay him, but he made solid moves throughout and held the balance. We both made some inaccuracies, but the game never left drawing margins.
It wasn't an awful game as such, but result-wise, of course, not quite pertinent.

In round 3, I was paired against a young talent (born in 2010), again with black. Him being rated 1797, I absolutely had to win. I played a slightly dubious opening line to avoid any and all preparation my opponent might have had in store, and it payed off, as he made a clear positional mistake I was able to capitalise on more or less efficiently.

The following day, round 4 and 5 were arguably the most important rounds for my personal tournament result.
In round 4, I played white against a 2240. I got a clearly better position out of the opening, misplayed it though and ended up in an equal middlegame where my only trump was having two bishops against bishop and knight. My opponent had an instant equaliser, he let me off the hook though and I began to make some progress with the bishop pair, eventually winning the game.

In round 5, I had black against one of the strongest players in the field, N R Vignesh (2493) from India. I was prepared for a tough game. He didn't put quite enough pressure though and I got a queenless middlegame where after a couple of moves, he offered a draw which I accepted, as the position was very equal (and certainly didn't yield any winning chances for me). A good result.

I was now in decent position both performance-wise (as I had recovered after the bad result in round 2 and was up by 2 rating points) as well as tournament-wise. At this point, I was one of 20 (!) players on 4/5 points, so the next day would decide everything. Anything could indeed happen.

The next day (which is today!), in round 6, I was paired against a team-mate of mine (2297) with White. I was hoping to win this game, and I did indeed find myself in a basically winning position out the opening after my opponent played a very risky move. I played badly though and didn't capitalise on my advantage. Instead, the game ended up in a queen-endgame where neither side could play for anything. Draw.
I was quite rejected after this game for having given away such an opportunity. The tournament was not over though as with a win in the last round, I could finish on a high note and with a decent overall tournament performance.

I went into my last game relatively relaxed after having had some time to cool off after the morning round. As I had the black pieces against a very capable player (2235), I wanted to make sure not to lose first and foremost. It was quite simple: a loss would be a desaster, with a draw the tournament would be disappointing, but not terrible, and with a win, I would be very happy. This should give some sort of sense of how many strong emotions chess players go through in their tournaments. If things go well, one is over the moon, if they go badly, inconsolable. One could argue that being less emotional and more stoic is preferable, but I'd say that those emotions are a natural by-product of being an ambitious player.
Anyway, back to the game: we went into an endgame quickly and this time, as opposed to round 2, I did manage to outplay my opponent as he made a couple of inaccurate moves. I'll show the game down below, as this was probably my favourite of this tournament.
So this concludes it. I'm particularly happy about this tournament as I had two setbacks I had to come back from, which I managed to do: the draw in round 2 and the missed opportunity in round 6.

Here's my game from the very last round annotated. Very happy with this one.
https://lichess.org/study/TN3uW7i3/BU1LUM3O

What went well, what didn't

Positives:

• I never found myself in bad positions. The engine evaluation didn't reach 1 point in favor of my opponent in any of my games (after having only analysed briefly, to be fair), and indeed, it felt like if anything, I was the one giving away chances, but never any winning opportunities to my opponents.
• High quality play on average, many good decisions
• Good openings, especially as black. I played a certain variation I had prepared beforehand three (!) times, and never had any problems. Two of those games ended in draws (round 2 and round 5), one in a really nice endgame win (round 7).

Negatives:

• I should probably have some opening with black in store that is sound, but offers more winning chances. On the one hand, I'm quite happy with the fact that I was very consistent, but maybe having the flexibility to play something more ambitious against much lower-rated players is worth the time needed to invest in preparing those openings. This refers to my draw in round 2, of course.
• This is not really a structural thing that needs fixing, but my 6th game was terrible in many respects: bad time management, bad decision-taking, bad intuition, bad calculation. I am hoping/guessing this was a one-off kind of thing, as I had not slept very well the night before and as all the other games went quite well. So really, not too many negatives, and a lot to be optimistic about.

What's next

Next week, I'll spend most of my time preparing for a couple of exams, but I will continue being consistent with my training, just with a nice and short daily routine:

• 2x 20 min. ChessTempo Tactics (Blitz, Medium)
• 2 blitz games (3+2)
• 2 blindfold blitz games (5+0)

The weekend of the week after that, after having finished my exams for this semester, I'll be competing in tournament chess again, this time a 9-round tournament in Lienz, Austria. Very much looking forward to that!
https://chess-results.com/tnr683837.aspx?lan=0
I'll skip next week's entry as there wouldn't be much to write about and as I'm quite busy with other stuff, but I'll be back on 12. or 13. of February, at which point I'll have played three rounds of the Lienz Open already.
As always, thanks for reading. Cheers!