Preparing for a standard tournament. Have not played in 6 years.

@legend

I would definitely hope I am stronger than 1550 CFC at this time. My positional grasp in the middlegame and tactical pattern recognition should be significantly better (I hope :P)

@bad_bishop_jones

Good point sir. Once in a while, I do play rapid (15 min) and blitz (5 min) time controls with my former chess club colleagues at our local coffee shop. It's just that I haven't formally played in a ranked classical tourney in 6 years.

@ roni_chessman,
I have two really nice wood sets (knock-off Jaques style) one ebony/boxwood and the other rosewood/boxwood, plus a dual timer digital clock and the 'ol wind-up Garde' not to mention leather roll-up boards, etc. & never use any of it LOL. For the most part using only GUI's aka. graphic user interface over the net. When I do hit a chess club it takes me a while to get used to viewing the board not appearing in horzontal 2-D. I miss the ticking of analog clocks but..... at any rate maybe play through games using you're gear in preparation prior to your tournament. Good Luck !

@Bad_Bishop_Jones

Nice! I am very curious as to how the rosewood/boxwood looks like. Those handcrafted pieces and semi-tournament size boards are excellent to train with in coffee shops.

(They have that legit, "I'm training to become a master" feel to them).

Tournament is in T-3 days. The suspense is killing me.

(Not literally speaking, because I would like to be alive to play in the tourney).

How did it go?

@chessanalyst @DrHack @NM BigH @xophi @Bad_Bishop_Jones @legend

3/4 in the under 2000 section. Placed joint second.

Lost my first game as black in a Taimanov-Sicilian setup because of an inaccurate sac. Saw my flawed calculation after my opponent's 4th move in the sequence. Lasted 42 moves then I died. Most grueling 2 hours of my life wasted. I will not play like Kasparov again.

Another lesson: Kids and teenagers these days have they're "favourite" lines or setup that they know very well. Deviate by playing strong, practical moves and outplay them in the middlegame. Most kids love tactical lines. Positional chess baffles the hell of them.

P.S. I also didn't write any notation on the pad. After the first game, I felt it was eating away too much of my hour's time :P

@roni_chessman
"Another lesson: Kids and teenagers these days have they're "favourite" lines or setup that they know very well. Deviate by playing strong, practical moves and outplay them in the middlegame. Most kids love tactical lines. Positional chess baffles the hell of them."

I learned that the hard way also :) Get a closed Breyer Ruy Lopez and you will be fine :D or at least lose tactically after they make it some Grunfeld or Najdorf even though that is impossible from a closed Ruy Lopez. lol... Or you can study them (the sharp openings) for thousands of hours and lose a complex battle again after you forget all the millions of moves of theory you tried to learn.

Notation should not take time like that. And its required in USCF/FIDE tournaments I don't know about Canadian tournaments.

Good to get 3/4! Well done :)