Ok, well, it's been a long while. Certainly unintentional but there you have it. Since the Austin Club Championship, I've been pretty busy with both study and tournament play, although its been no easy path so far. I feel as if I'm actually progressing but my rating was not indicating that until very recently.
The first out of town tournament I played in was a Temple Chess Club tourney and I played horribly. Won one of three and had a 50 point drop! Ouch. However, I got better with each game in that tournament.
Then was fortunate enough to be in San Antonio the week of their City Championship. This was my first multi-day tournament out of town. Earned 1.5 out of 5 in this tournament and played a pretty stiff set of players comparatively so I was happy with the result. I won the only game I played against a lower rated player and drew against a 1475. I lost to a 1455, 1560, and a 1838. None of those were real close but I was competitive. Analysis showed I am still making calculation errors and missing in-between moves. So I'm working on ingraining a standard approach to each move decision.
Last tourney was back in Temple last weekend. I scored 2.5 out of 3 in an U1400 section. I played pretty well in that I had no outright blunders although I have found several inaccuracies since the tourney. But that performance was good enough to tie for 1st in my section!
Still haven't learned to use ChessFlash so actual diagrams will have to wait.
The remainder of the year, I'm looking to play the Southwest Open and the U.S. Class Championships so by the end of the year I'll have had quite the chess experience.
Back to books!
