Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Close Call!

In March I ran a bunch of game/30 tournaments at the club on Monday nights. I called them March Madness. I had gotten some requests for running a game/90, one game a week tournament so I scheduled a four rounder starting tonight. I was hoping to draw a few more people then the usual suspects of Alan, Silvio and me. Lately this young kid Ben has been coming and giving the adults fits. Every week I've been paired against him in the first round. I've managed to stay relatively unscathed in my battles with him. I have two wins and a draw. Some of the other adults have not been so fortunate.

So last night in addition to the usual suspects and the kid we have Mike Amori from the Westchester Chess Academy. Isn't this just wonderful. I have five players for a four round tournament. I don't want to send the kid home with a first round bye, especially since he comes the farthest to get to the club. I decided I would make it a round robin, and give myself the first round bye. I had been in White Plains for my Tae Kwon Do class any way so it didn't really matter to me if I played the round or not. I make the and announce the pairings. I figured I would get an early night. I had my put my coat on and was ready to head out the door when suddenly another player shows up.

I had met Greg at the Hudson Valley March Open a few weeks ago, had told him about the club and added him to my email list. He had decided to come for the first time this Monday. Rating wise he fit in right where I had put the bye so I didn't even have to change the pairings around. I was a little leery of him because I had seen him knock off a high 1600 in the first round of the tournament we met at. He's one of those guys with an old provisional rating who hasn't played in a tournament for three years. With guys like that the rating is meaningless. I learned that the hard way the above mentioned tournament when I lost a long game in the last round to a 1400 who had not played in a tournament in 14 years.

My game with Greg was wild. I felt like I was living points 1 and 2 in BDK's recent post on feeling good about being a patzer. "1. You get to be a reckless gunslinger." and "2. Tactics is everything." (Not to be the grammar police, but shouldn't it be are not is? Is tactics singular or plural?) As you can see from the game that follows he certainly played like a gunslinger. I kept expecting simple exchanges, but he let it all hang out. Fortunately he missed the killer move.

3 comments:

wang said...

Nice game Polly. Actually now that I think about it, I would treat every tournament player in NYC with a bit of caution. There is alot of chess people can play without ever being rated. The Village chess shop, Washington Square, the place across the street from the Village chess shop.

Lots of places...

likesforests said...

In the opening, 3.Nf3 looks sharper. Black has to worry both about his e5 pawn and about an early d4.

Polly said...

Like: I've been playing this move order for years. Maybe I should give more consideration to 3. Nf3. Maybe that's why Black always seems to get play against me in this opening.