Other women tournament directors and I have made an interesting observation. It seems no matter how many players there are in a tournament, and how few of them are women that the pairing program will always manage to pair them. This tournament proved to be no different. The first round I lost to Larry Tamarkin again! Geez, another random 2100 player that I'm 0 for lifetime against. I think that was loss number 12. The guy just annoys the hell out of me, and lots of other people too. Unfortunately I can't seem to use my annoyance to my advantage. Unlike Jay Bonin he who destroyed him in the second round. They were the first game done.
The field was fairly weak so I actually got paired down in round two. I knew even before the pairings went up I'd be playing Lilia. The colors were right for that pairing. She's deceptive. She just plays nice solid and quiet moves as black. This night she seemed particularly tired. She was yawning a lot and at times she seemed to be zoning out. I'm thinking to myself "It's got to be tough being 9 years old, and playing chess at 8:15 pm on a school night, after a full day of school, after school activities, and homework." I wasn't allowing my observations and thoughts to cloud my thinking, but when the position is really quiet and boring sometimes I get antsy.
Here was one of those positions where I starting seeing things that weren't there. I played 18. Nc7. For some reason I thought after the trade I was going to win the backward pawn on b6. I can't even blame this on a piece not being on the same square while doing the analysis. Her knight was on d7 quarding the pawn, but somehow I became fixated with the idea that only the queen was covering the pawn. It went downhill from there.
18. Nc7 bd319. Qd1 Bxc7
20. Bb7 Qe7
21. Nb3? a4 (big tempo!)
22. Nd2 Qb4
23. b3 axb3
24. axb3 Ra2
25. Nf1 Rea8
26. g4 (gasping for air) h6
27. Ng3?? Rd2! (my queen has fallen victim to an "epaulette mate!"
28. Qxd2 Qxd2
29. Red1 Qb4
30. h3 Qxb3
31. Bf1 Bxf1
32 Rxf1 b5
White Resigns
When I saw Lilia's mom afterwards, I told her that I managed to make it so Lilia and Linda would not face each other in round 3. Instead it would be Linda and me with the 0-2 scores having the round 3 face off. So this would be one of the rare moments in a 4 round swiss that I would play a second female player. 19 players in the tournament, 3 women including myself, and I get to play them all.
3 comments:
I'm sorry I 'annoy the hell' out of you; I annoy the hell out of myself too - I imagine that I am for you a little bit like bonin is to me; I've lost so many games to this 'chess savant' and it make little sense to me; Fact is the guy just has a lot more 'natural talent' then I do - Last point - studying the game hard 6 or more hours a day isn't yet paying any dividend's for me (I keep losing to Bonin & others) and because of this I will annoy you (and others), considerably less by coming considerably less to these tounaments as I see you no point in continuing to frustrate myself (by losing out on a prize), every time I do play. Instead I am looking to put chess players on youtube & I would be pleased to hear from anyone who is interested (See my recording of Dr. Frank Brady's lecture there). Larry S. Tamarkin (Extremely random 2100 player-:).
And the beat goes on. Last night was another totally aggravating loss to you. Time pressure sucks!
By the way - I think you got your facts a little wrong - Bonin didn't exactly destroy me; I had a very good position but screwed it up and lost in the resulting endgame (After that I lost very quickly to Evan Rabin (Also another repeat loss), quite quickly in the last round - I was wiped out by the previous depressing loss)... Shows me that I have to study even harder - Especially the endgame, something that Bonin seems to know how to handle just by playing a million games... If it was the first game to end I was quite unaware of that. I understand the frustration you have in losing to me every time - Multiply that by the frustration I feel when I lose to some 'randome IM' who only plays chess all the time and is not known for studying at all and yet keeps beating me (whatever the position), despite the fact that I specifically study chess with the goal of beating guys like him! And imagine how pleased I was that Alex Lenderman completely crushed him in the Queen's championship last night! (10-26-2007) In fact many of the players there seemed to enjoy it as like 5-guys brought me the game-score (I'm bulletin editor & Bonin is also known for not being able to write down his moves in a way that can be deciphered for publication). Seems quite a lot of people are even more annoyed about this player who always 'struts around like a parrot' & acts like the tournament is just there for him to win all the time!, Regards, Larry
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