Chop Wood, Carry Water: Spinning Wheels

I’ll say this about the tournament: I love the enclosed garden/atrium at the event site. Lovely place to sit and decompress between rounds.

So I didn’t do particularly well. You’ll see the results and the games further down, but suffice it to say I was really disappointed with my performance. There were some mitigating factors — a stressful week and not enough sleep the night before didn’t help — but even so, this was a poor performance.

Top line results:

Previous Rating (USCF): 722

Round One: Draw (1/2 pt bye)

Round Two: Loss

Round Three: Loss

Round Four: Win

Total points: 1.5/4

Final Table Position: 9th (out of 12)

Current Rating: 677

Soooooo yeah. Not great.

The results are fine, I guess, but I’m just really not happy with my performance. In my first game (Round Two) I had a fairly solid advantage in material, tempi, and time on the clock (not reflected below) and I somehow managed to piss that away. In the second game (Round Three) I played my pet opening for White (London System) but fucked up the move order and let my opponent steamroll me. The third game (Round Four) was the one I won, but I still made some key mistakes, even when I had a clear advantage. I know realize in competitive chess — like in any sport — sometimes a win is a win any way you get it. But I do care about how I win. I want to win well, and I’m not doing that right now.

Anyway, here are my games from the tournament. You can also view them on Lichess.

Round One: Bye

Round Two: Siddharth Chatterjee vs James Bridget Gordon

1. e4 d6 2. d4 Nf6 3. Nc3 Nbd7 4. Nf3 e5 5. d5 Be7 6. Be2 c6 7. Bd3 O-O 8. O-O Qc7 9. Ne2 cxd5 10. exd5 Nxd5 11. Ng3 N7f6 12. Nf5 Bxf5 13. Bxf5 e4 14. Bxe4 Nxe4 15. Qxd5 Qxc2 16. Re1 Qxf2+ 17. Kh1 Nf6 18. Qd2 Qxd2 19. Bxd2 Rfe8 20. Nd4 d5 21. Nf5 Bc5 22. Rec1 b6 23. b4 Bf2 24. Rf1 Re2 25. Bc3 Rae8 26. g3 Ne4 27. Nxg7 Rc8 28. Be5 Rcc2 29. Rfc1 Re1+ 30. Rxe1 Bxe1 31. Rxe1 Nf2+ 32. Kg1 Nh3+ 33. Kh1 f6 34. Bxf6 Kf7 35. Bd4 Rd2 36. Rf1+ Kg6 37. Rf6+ Kxg7 38. Be5 d4 39. Rf2+ 1–0 Black resigns

Round Three: James Bridget Gordon vs Corey Yates

1. d4 c6 2. Bf4 d5 3. e3 Bf5 4. Nd2 e6 5. Ngf3 Nd7 6. c3 Qb6 7. b3 Ngf6 8. Ne5 Nxe5 9. Bxe5 Be7 10. Nf3 h6 11. h3 O-O 12. g4 Be4 13. Bd3 c5 14. Bxe4 Nxe4 15. h4 Nxc3 16. Qd3 c4 17. Qxc3 Bb4 18. Rc1 Rac8?19. Ke2 Bxc3 20. Rxc3 cxb3 21. Rxb3 Qa6+ 22. Kd2 Qxa2+ 0–1 White resigns

Round Four: Cristina Orozco vs James Bridget Gordon

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 Bg7 4. Bf4 d6 5. Nf3 O-O 6. d5 c5 7. Qd2 Bf5 8. e4 Nxe4 9. Nxe4 Bxe4 10. Ng5 Bf5 11. Be2 e5 12. Be3 h6 13. Ne6 fxe6 14. b3 e4 15. O-O Bxa1 16. Bxh6 Rf7 17. Qe3 Bd4 18. Qd2 Rh7 19. dxe6 Bg7 20. Bxg7 Rxg7 21. Bd1 Bxe6 22. Bc2 d5 23. Qe2 Qd6 24. b4 b6 25. Ba4 Rh7 26. Be8 Qxh2# 0–1

Stray observations:

• I think my big problem right now is just calculation. I keep making stupid mistakes, even in games where I’m winning, and I keep finding ways to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. I realize that to an extent calculation is a skill that can be learned or improved upon, but there’s a point at which either you can do the thing or you can’t. I’m starting to worry that maybe my brain just can’t do the things I need it to do. And I can’t get a new brain.
• I also keep making a lot of the same kinds of errors and I’m worried that I’m just not learning from my mistakes. I don’t know how to fix that.
• In terms of stuff I can address through study and practice, Priority One has to be endgame principles. Full stop. It’s a glaring weakness in my game and I can’t ignore it anymore.
• I feel like my mentality isn’t where it needs to be. Something about sitting down at the board at a tournament makes me lose focus in a way that I don’t in correspondence matches or in casual OTB games.
• I will cop to some externalities that may have affected my performance. I had a bad and stressful week. I didn’t get enough sleep the night before. I was fending off a minor illness. My commute to the event was aggravating — the driver of of my first bus ignored my flag pull and I had to walk four blocks under time pressure to get my connecting bus in time. And I didn’t have time to futz with my appearance, so I effectively went in Boy Mode, and the inadvertent misgendering got to me in a way that it usually doesn’t under normal circumstances. I realize this doesn’t excuse my performance, and if I want to have a viable career in competitive chess I need to be able to perform even under less-than-ideal circumstances. But I have to acknowledge that all this factored in.
• I really want to play in a tournament with longer time controls. The two events I’m played in so far were G/30 and G/40, respectively. It wasn’t a problem for me in this event, but I find I perform much better when I have more time. (I’m a beast in correspondence games, let me tell you.) So I’d love to do an event where the time control is G/60 or even G/90. I really want to do one of Chicago Chess Center’s Plus-Score events, but honestly I don’t think I can compete on that level yet. It’s going to be RBOs and U1000 sections for a little while longer.
• I also really want to play in an event that starts later in the day. These 9-10am start times are a lot harder for me than I thought they would be. Surely there must be events out there that start in the afternoons. Surely.

So that’s two down. Seven rated games. Three wins. Four losses.

For the moment I’m chalking this up to a bad day at the office. But I also feel like I need to start showing some progress soon, and that if I have more days like Saturday then maybe I need ask some hard questions about whether or not I’m really up for this.

I don’t know when my next event is. The next Chicago Chess Center RBO is on June 30th, but I have soccer blogging work that night. It’s also the World Cup. The next Evanston Tri-Level is July 21st, but I also have work. My day job makes planning for chess stuff complicated, and I probably can’t do any major weekend-long events until at least November.

Ok, that’s my report. I wish I had something better to say. I’m pretty demoralized after this weekend and I need to find a way to push past it.