Marshall ALTO U1600 Recap

Last Sunday, I played in a ALTO (At Least Twenty-One) tournament at Marshall Chess Club, in the U1600 section. This post is a recap of my games. I'll try to relate some it back to my previous post on Opening Principles for Beginners.. Check that post out too, if you haven't already.

Game 1

In this game I faced the Italian. Even though I was much higher rated, my opponent played a rather slow, but more-or-less solid game. Ultimately I was steering it towards a bad-bishop / good knight endgame. However, the game ended somewhat prematurely when my opponent blundered their queen to a knight fork.

Game 2

The conventional wisdom we tell beginners is "don't bother learning openings," but this game is a case study on why that is wrong. My opponent played the French, but didn't seem to know that the point is to play c5 and fight for the center i.e. trade white's center d4 pawn for the flank c5 pawn. He played c5 but didn't continue to build up pressure.

Ultimately, his king got stuck in the center and I found tactics.

When I say "learn an opening" I mean learn 4 -5 moves of the opening. In a slow game like this (45 minutes with 5-second delay) against a low rated player, you don't need to memorize 15-20 moves of theory. But learning the first 5 most common moves of the French takes maybe 1/2 hour of study and doesn't hurt you.

Game 3

In this game, my opponent played into the Four-Knights "Fork Trick." This is something I covered in my More Opening Principles Blog. White should not play into an opening that gives Black equality on move 4. No, it is NOT a "forced win" for Black... but there are so many other fine options for White, I just don't understand why anybody intentionally plays into this opening.

Anyway, even though I didn't have a forced win, getting equality early in the game was enough to eventually convert to a win, even under time pressure.

Game 4

In the last round, I was undefeated - for the fist time ever at any tournament. If I got at least a draw, I would share first place. However, I again had to play with the black pieces.

As it happened, White played a sideline of the Scotch game that I had not seen before. I emerged from a somewhat wild opening with advantage, but failed to convert, and ultimately had to resign after several subtly poor moves that ceded initiative. But this at least demonstrates that learning as Black to defend against early aggression by White is a core principle for beginners. I didn't see that I should have focused on converting to a winning endgame.

"Identifying what your plan should be" perhaps is a topic for a future blog post.

Conclusion

I finished the tournament with a final score of 3.0/4. Even though I lost USCF rating in my final game, I won the class prize and so made a "profit" for the tournament.

Overall, the tournament was a success - I've never won three straight before, and have several times drawn lower-rated opponents. So this was gratifying in the sense that I was able to convert wins and not blunder a draw as I have in the past. Looking forward to the next one!