Round one of the Leek congress last night was against Nicholas McLean, graded 96ECF.
DeanMaddenvNicholasMcLean.pgn
I played the Moller attack against him but got confused when he played 7...Bxc3, as most people play Nxe4. On move 9 I should have played d5 instead of castling. It was one of the rare games where it was pretty much lost in the opening, I never got into the game and not much more to say about it.
I turned up for round two this morning and was paired against John Fenby, then with 2 minutes to go they announced some repairings. When I looked at the board I was the odd one out without an opponent. I'm pretty annoyed because there was at least one person who turned up at the venue to enter just 10 minutes before the start of the round, and just happened to be a member of the organisers club, then he gets a game but someone like me who applied a couple of weeks ago doesn't get a game.
So anyways I had to kill four hours, and then turned up for round 3 against a 13yr old called Adam S Arshad.
AdamSArshadvDeanMadden.pgn
To be honest he didn't seem to be much interested in playing, not recording his moves, and offering a draw after about 10 moves.
Move 14 I was a Queen up, and just played sensibly until he resigned.
Hopefully I'll have some more interesting games tomorrow!
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4 comments:
When looking at the first game i had the feeling that either you overlooked many of your opponent's threats or that you had lack of a plan after Bxc3+.
Pity you couldn't play in the second round. Its weird that new pairings are made 10 minutes, never happened in any of the tournament i played in so far.
Round 3 you have said it all. Your opponent obviously wasn't in the game and like you said was rather somewhere else then behind a chessboard.
Anyway, goodluck with the rest of the tournament!
That sucks, and then wait around to play someone who doesn't seem to care about playing.
10 minutes before the round to repair is highly unusual unless some results were put in wrong. Redoing the pairings to allow a late comer in is totally wrong. He should be told that if a suitable opponent can be found he'll be paired otherwise he gets a 1/2 point bye. If it was an organizer error leading to the player not being paired he should be given a full point bye if an opponent is not found.
Were you the lowest ranked player? If so then you would be the one to get the bye in the case of an odd number of players.
At the tournament I played in on Thursday night a grandmaster had shown up just as the round was getting started. There was an odd number, but pairing the grandmaster against the player getting the bye would have been a totally wrong pairing. Had the GM been paired normally he would have played a 2000 player. The player with the bye was rated 1700, so it was too big a rating difference to allow taht pairing. The garndmaster took a 1/2 point bye for round one and the tournament director found a house player to play the player with the bye.
Thanks chesstiger and Polly. I had a better day of chess yesterday. Even though I lost both games, I enjoyed them a lot and both were competitive. I'll probably post them tonight.
As far as I can tell, the repairing was because of late entrants which was why I was annoyed. I did get the full point bye but frankly I'd rather play and lose in a game I can learn from.
Polly, regarding your post on the LEP blog, I'm sure more than 10 people read your posts. I read them but don't comment on the games as I'm at a much lower level than yourself. But I'll make more of an effort to understand them and ask questions when I don't understand things. One of the best things about yesterday was going over the game in depth with my opponent to understand his thinking in the game, I think it's something I should do more often.
I think the best of tournaments is the post mortem with strong opponents. At times I wish I had my computer with me so that I could put the analysis in with the game. Often by the time I get home I've forgotten some of the key points we discussed and have to rely on Fritz to refresh my memory.
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