Lina Grumette Memorial Day Classic Rd. 1

As one may have gathered from reading my last few posts I'm in Los Angeles playing chess. There were many different options in terms of possible tournaments this Memorial Day Weekend. So why this one? Certainly there were closer and cheaper options. Cheapest would have been Steve Immitt's weekend swiss at the Marshall. The downside would have been having to play all the same people I play every week there. I could have played in the US Amateur East. The upside would have been getting to put "cheap" New Jersey gas in my tank. The down side would have been playing under rated little kids.

I could have gone to the Chicago Open and hung out with Chess Loser. I wouldn't have had to get on another plane when I arrived at O'Hare. But where in earth is Wheeling, IL? How do you get there from O'Hare without renting a car or spending a fortune on a taxi? I was too lazy to figure that out. Other options were the US Amateur West in Tucson, AZ or Washington Open in Redmond. I'm not sure me and my Mac would be allowed in Microsoft Land. Also there's the how to get there without a car rental thing again. Renting a car to drive to and from a chess tournament is a waste. What does one do at a chess tournament? Play chess, analyze games, eat, drink and sleep. All of that can be done within the confines of the hotel. Those were more interesting venues then the LAX Hilton. Talk about boring locations! Any hotel at an airport tends to be pretty boring since the food and entertainment options are rather limited. Also the view from the room kind of sucks.

However one can not beat the ease of getting off an airplane, grabbing her luggage, and jumping on the free hotel shuttle. So here I am for second straight year hanging out at LAX over Memorial Day weekend. Unlike last year when I played in my own section and had a marginal result against randomly rated California players this year I opted to play up. I also took the pre-emptive round 5 1/2 point bye to avoid early full point byes, and to repeat my double dip of playing in Monday's action event.

Some people are crazy enough to try playing their fifth round of the main event while playing in the game/30 at the same time. I may be stupid, bu I'm not crazy. Last year in the second round of the action I played someone who running back and forth between events. The funny thing was he had been assigned the bye in his section in the main event, but accepted a game against a house player. If that had been me, I would have graciously accepted my full point bye, and concentrated on the action games.

In the first round I got apired up against a hgh 1800. It was a slow positional grind. It reminded me of why I hate 6 hour time controls. I should have played the 2 day schedule where I'd have 3 games at G/60. That would have also saved me a night in the hotel, and I bet my airfare would have been cheaper flying on Saturday instead of Friday of Memorial Day weekend. I thought about that after I booked my airfare. Note to self: Look at different tournament schedule options before booking my flight.

Here's the game. Fritz had better ideas then what we looked at during the post mortem.

Hopefully I'll play better in the next round.