I played chess casually over the years but never real seriously although I've built a small collection of books and read bits and pieces of most of them.
However, two weeks ago I attended the Austin Chess Club and played in a tournament. The first since '95 when I had played in a handful. However, I live only 10 minutes away from a club and I'm going to be a bit serious and play with the serious intent of improving my game. This blog will, I hope, be a kind of bread crumb trail of my experiences and thoughts along the way.
Played my first quick chess at the club the first night there. 6 rounds of G/15 and 3 sec increment. First interesting experience was the new to me clocks. I have a typical chess clock that you simply set the hands and let the clocks run down till a flag falls. These "new" clocks are all digital and manage the increments that I had only experienced in online chess to manage lag.
It should be noted that my current rating is 1289. This makes me a fairly weak player. USCF defines that as a Class D player. So there are 6 levels above mine. I'd like to lessen that number a bit over time.
That first tournament, I did not keep a score sheet so nothing to evaluate really after the tournament except my feelings. I won 1 game of 6. So the feelings were not that charitable concerning the results. However, I really did enjoy the competition.
This week I joined a 4 rd Swiss with game in 90 minutes with 60 sec. increment. I lost rd 1 to a very affable guy rated 1656. We played an entertaining game until I blundered a very drawish position away and was immediately punished. In a later post I will offer up an analysis to try and learn a bit from the result. Will be breaking out the opening books (Korn's MCO in particular) to see my early mistakes and unintentional novelties. So 3 rounds to go over the next 3 weekends.
No comments:
Post a Comment