US Open: Day 1 Summary & 1st Round Game

It's Friday morning and I'll be playing round 4 in less then an hour.  I got paired up again in round three.  Once again I totally outplayed my opponent out of the opening with Black, but couldn't hold my positional or clock advantage.  I over extended my queen side pawns and then ended out in a good knight versus bad bishop ending.  Unfortunately I was the one with the bad bishop.  Games like this remind me of why I like knights when I have them.

After three rounds I have a score of .5 - 2.5.  Slightly worse then the last two years at this same juncture.  The fourth round is a crucial one for me.  I'll get paired down this round.  If I can avoid being victimized by a lower rated player then I will have the hope of decent pairings for the enxt few rounds.  If I lose then it will get ugly.  However I'm not sweating it.  Even though I only have a half point, which BTW I did not deserve, I'm actually satisfied with my play for the most part.  I'm taking my time, albeit sometimes too much of it.  More importantly, I haven't had the overwhelming desire to be bouncing around the room looking at other games.  We'll see how long that lasts when I play the slow game tonight.

I'm taking a little more holistic approach to the tournament.  Yesterday morning I went out for a walk.  I had a manicure and massage, and then did some grocery shopping.  I brought back lots of fresh fruit and milk.  I'm also making an effort to come back to the room between rounds, relax and eat a healthy snack.  It's easy for me at this tournament to get totally overstimulated by the reunion atmosphere of the event.  I actually came back to the room after taking some pictures in the tournament room and ate a little bit, relaxed and meditated before bed.  I know if I had gone to the skittles room I would have ended out staying up until 1:30 am.

I also have not been running from one workshop to another.  The workshops are sometimes interesting, but depending how involved I get in the discussion they can be draining.  I'll have my fill of meetings and hotly debated discussion when I attend the delegates meetings on Saturday and Sunday.  This hotel is nice and quiet so I don't have to deal with all the noise of a casino in the lobby.  This is not Vegas!

While eating my breakfast of cereal, fresh strawberries and green tea I went over and analyzed my first two games.  Round one was a good game.  However after spending much of the game with a positional and time advantage, both managed to disappear at the worst possible moment.  I didn't all the moves down, but here is the final position when I ran out of time.

Black to move

It's unclear whether I can actually hold the ending.  White is probably going to win my h pawn. Then becomes a matter of whether or not I can pick up his b pawn.  I looked at one possibility using Fritz, but I don't think Fritz plays ending very well.  The analysis pointed to me holding the position.  However the clock was too big a factor. 1... Kc6 2. h4 Kb5 3. Ne3 Kxb4 4. h5 Kc5 5. Ng4 Kd6 6. Nxh6 Ke7 7. Ng4 Kf7 8.Kg5 Ba7 9. Nh6+ Kg7 10. Nf5+ Kh7 11. Kf6 Be3 12. Ke5 Bg5.

Here's the game up to where I stopped keeping score. 

RJhunjhnuwala080510.pgn


Almost time for round 4, so I'll sign off here.  To be continued.....