For many chess players who are at that in-between level between master and greater heights, the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has been a tough pill to swallow. With a sudden and long-lasting lack of strong open tournaments in the U.S., it has become harder than ever for chess players of all levels to gain the necessary experience to make a leap to the next level. While the global situation has definitely improved, it is still not a simple task to find regular tournament competitions.
The Charlotte Chess Center & Scholastic Academy has made the most of this predicament, offering various weekly club events and, most importantly for stronger players, regular opportunities to compete in 10 player Round Robin IM/GM Norm Invitationals. The chance to play nine games against consistently high-quality opposition is invaluable, and you can imagine my excitement when my application to play in the recent Spring IM Norm Invitational at the CCCSA was accepted. It was the largest norm invitational in U.S. history, with five groups and fifty players in all. I was placed in group “E.”
Round Robin events are a very different animal than the typical open American tournament, and in my opinion much more tense. Seeing as full pairings are typically released a week or two in advance, every player will be fully prepared for their adversaries, and ready to play. While opening preparation is also of utmost importance, I would say that stamina is the main factor that decides how the standings shake out in norm events. Each and every game is a tough one, and generally decided only in the third, fourth or fifth hour.
I felt ready, and my start certainly showed that this confidence was not unjustified.
ROUND 1
My first round saw a pairing against one of the bottom seeds of my section. Alperen Kanli is originally from Azerbaijan but has recently come to the U.S., settling in Virginia. It was obvious that, with his 2130 FIDE rating, he was in a similar predicament to me: obviously talented but unable to play too much. Still, I had the white pieces, and came into this game tentatively confident. A win would have been a great way to start off my first norm invitational.
However, it was not to be. He played the opening somewhat carelessly and gave me a golden opportunity to seize the initiative, but it being the first round, my mind was not yet sharp enough to take it. After that a full-fledged fight ensued, but in the end neither of us managed to tip the balance.
Suffice it to say that this game was by far the calmest of the round. Decisive results abounded, and indeed, the only remaining point split was due to a massive oversight from a player on the verge of a full point. FM Nico Chasin in particular had a heartbreaking loss against the bottom seed of the tournament after playing a fine game.
After such a result, it would seem nearly impossible to achieve a norm, needing 7 points out of the last eight games, but we will be hearing more about Nico later on.
ROUND 2
Playing against younger adversary is always a double-edged sword. Ryo Chen was (and is) the top 12-year-old in the country, and with a FIDE rating of nearly 2300, I was the obvious rating underdog. He was also surely buoyed by achieving an IM Norm in the last Charlotte Invitational, in which his tournament strategy was crystal clear: defeat the lower rated players and draw the top seeds. That time he succeeded in his goal.
Coming into this game, however, I had a feeling that Ryo would be in an unsteady state of mind: he had narrowly missed a chance to defeat the top seed of the tournament as black in the first round. I also figured that he would be putting additional pressure on himself due to the aforementioned tournament strategy: he needed to win!
Out of the opening phase, I was feeling quite comfortable. I had managed to execute the thematic plan of the position and was already up half an hour. He missed one chance to restrict my pieces and following that inaccuracy I managed to break out, achieving very nice activity and trading off my worst piece. By that point his time pressure was too severe, and he crumpled under the pressure. It was an important win that allowed me to get off to a good start.
This was to be a particularly bloody round, with all decisive games. Contrary to the rumors, closed tournaments are not always riddled with short draws. Everyone was fighting hard, as was well evidenced by the fact that all the invited IMs suffered the bitter taste of defeat. For my part I was quite happy to start with 1½/2 and was hoping to continue my run of good form. There is no telling how far momentum can take you.
ROUND 3
I saw this as a must-win game. My opponent, Mike Zaloznyy, peaked at about 2300 USCF, but since then has dropped to the low 2200s and stayed more or less stagnant for the past few years. Despite this fact, I should have taken into account his crushing win against the top seed of the tournament the round before – coincidentally his first GM scalp.
Past the opening, my confidence seemed wholly justified, as despite a few adventures in the opening, I had countered his Scandinavian quite well and had a dangerous looking attack. As things were beginning to look desperate for him, he took advantage of my aversion to a queen trade very nicely and sprung back into the game with a tactical trick.
After that I was quite rattled, and with time trouble impending the endgame got out of control. All things considered I defended quite well and reached what should have been a drawn position, before self-imploding …
Unfortunately, I am inclined to say that this disappointing loss had a negative impact on my next few games, which is definitely something I would like to change. For the most part the games of this round were quite peaceful, which can’t be avoided from time to time. Sometimes both sides just play well.
ROUND 4
After the sting of my last game, the main goal this round against my talented young opponent was simply to stay solid and hold tight as black. It seemed I was well on my way to achieving this goal after a very solid opening, but soon thereafter a few listless moves paved the way for a massive error, which my opponent nicely took advantage of.
After a forcing sequence I had the worse of a tough endgame, but even so, I was frustrated to learn later on that I missed the best way to resist, more or less giving up without a fight. He may have played a good game and deserved to win, but it is still every chess player’s job to make the opponent fight as hard as possible for victory. On this day I clearly failed in that objective.
The other games saw two quick draws at opposite ends of the rating spectrum, and two more fighting games which ended in quite well-deserved wins for the respective players.
ROUND 5
While on paper holding the draw against an opponent rated nearly 200 points higher than oneself is a good result, I was extremely disappointed with this game, and for good reason. I surprised my opponent, IM Alexander Matros, with the Rossolimo, an opening I had never played before this game. He looked away for a few seconds in surprise and made a great practical decision himself: he flipped the surprise on its head, playing a variation that he had never employed before against the Rossolimo.
While the objective evaluation of the line can be questioned, it totally shocked me, and my reaction was very poor. He achieved a totally fine position and even began to grab the initiative, but one poor decision on his part allowed me to escape with a draw.
Despite another fairly stale round results-wise, the most noteworthy result was Nico Chasin’s long, grinding victory over Mike Zaloznyy. This capped Chasin’s impressive rebound from the first-round disappointment with a four-game winning streak, and began a disappointing finish for Zaloznyy, with a subsequent five straight losses. “Castling kingside and queenside,” as they said in the old days, referring to the numerical coincidence of the zeroes next to each other on the cross-table.
ROUND 6
This round saw my difficulties come to a boil. GM Julio Becerra Rivero played a very tame Reti/Kings Indian Attack setup, and right from the very first moves my position was fine, if not somewhat superior. Despite this fact, my inexperience showed. I didn’t realize that in the pawn structure at hand, I should have exchanged one of white’s powerful central pawns to give my pieces more room to breathe. I failed to realize this fact, and duly lost.
It was extremely frustrating to lose in such a way time and again, but there was nothing to do but put the disappointments behind me, move on, and keep fighting. And indeed, in the very next round I was rewarded for my perseverance.
ROUND 7
Although the previous rounds had not gone as planned, I was certainly looking forward to two straight games with the white pieces. And indeed, it was just what I needed to snap out of the funk. IM Olivier-Kenta Chiku-Ratte had been having a decent performance up to this point, but he seemed to run out of energy as the finishing line grew near. A curious coincidence: in the last three rounds my opponent played the bottom three seeds. He very well could have lost all three games.
I believe I surprised my opponent by repeating the Rossolimo, even after my disastrous debut with the opening in the fifth round. He, too, went for a somewhat dubious sideline, but it was his bad luck that I happened to have a better recollection of how to continue from scanning my notes before the game.
While I did get a very clearly superior position from the opening, I handled it somewhat uncertainly and gave him a golden opportunity to equalize. Having missed his chance, I was able to consolidate my positional superiority quite well and increase my grip on his position.
While it seemed that zero hour was near, I played very carelessly, overlooking an interesting try that he duly essayed. It seemed that I had to cripple my king’s position so as not to lose a key central pawn. Looking at it afterwards, it turns out that I had a way to secure a nearly winning position tactically despite the loss, but it didn’t seem so clear at the board.
Though my king was shivering, my opponent’s pieces were still quite badly placed, and so there was not much he could do about it. The game was balanced, as my king’s position counterweighted my positional advantage. While this felt like a correct assessment at the board, it seems to me now that my opponent thought my somewhat weakened king to be a more important factor of the position than it actually was.
And so, he lashed out, ruining his queenside pawn structure but advancing a pawn on the kingside in return, hoping to open up that wing and get at my monarch. A very simple tactic won me a pawn, and after that it was mop-up work. There were some nervous moments later on, but it all worked out in the end.
This was an extremely important win that salvaged both rating points and a bit of pride. As far as the rest of the games went, this round was particularly decisive. FM Andy Woodward won a very nice Grunfeld and went on to win his last three games. Unfortunately, despite his three wins in the final rounds, his efforts were not rewarded with a norm: he had already conceded a loss and three draws early on. Nico Chasin, on the other hand, kept his norm chances alive and well with an important win against IM Matros to reach 5½/7. It was to be a dramatic final day.
ROUND 8
It was somewhat jarring to reach the board this round and, almost instantly, witness two of the five games end with a quick handshake. It is perfectly natural that the invited participants, who had nothing to gain even in the best-case scenario, would prefer to take a rest on the last day instead of playing. And yet, it went against my naturally ingrained feeling that chess is a game to be played, not to be drawn without shots fired … It is worth noting, however, that apart from the non-played “games,” every other result came in as decisive.
My opponent for this game, Qindong Yang, the lowest seed in my section but performing stronger than myself, shows up in only 24 games in the database. With such a number it is clearly not easy to get a good sense of the adversary’s regular opening choices. Fortunately, I managed to track down his anonymous online playing account (my methods shall remain undisclosed), which, though not so useful in terms of exact preparation, helped me get a clearer picture of my opponent’s strengths and weaknesses.
Previously his main opening was the Pirc defense, which tends to lead to messy, sharp fights. My opinion of the opening is quite dubious, and it seems that he came to this realization as well, as most recently he has pulled off a full switch to the Najdorf. While no particular opening lines of note came up in my search, I did notice that he seemed to have a very good knowledge of the latest opening theory against all of white’s main tries for an advantage.
So, with all this newfound knowledge in mind, it was time to switch it up with a very little-known line (374 games in my database), that leads to primarily positional play. The hope was that I was aiming at a weak spot: a non-theoretical strategic fight would seem to be the opposite of my opponent’s goals!
The choice turned out to be spot-on. Following some original opening play, I emerged with a small but very clear positional edge. More importantly, it was difficult to imagine him generating much counter play in the near future.
Even so, I handled the position uncertainly, and gave him unexpected play, mainly generated around the … d5 pawn break. Though I did misplay my chances and give black chances to equalize, they were never obvious, and even in the ensuing positions it was only my side playing for the win.
In the end, after half an hour of thought at a critical juncture, he failed to find the narrow path, which involved sacrificing a pawn for full compensation. With his mistake my advantage grew, and with pressure mounting on both the board and the clock, he blundered badly, gifting me the full point without a great fight.
ROUND 9
As fate would have it, in the last round I was to play the only participant who could still achieve a norm: FM Nico Chasin. After taking a strategic quick draw as black against GM Becerra Rivero earlier in the day, it seemed as though he would have every chance of achieving his objective. While he was fully rested, prepared, and ready, I had had to fight it out in the first game of the day, and with this being my first round-robin invitational, I will admit that my energy was running on low. He even had the white pieces.
Things turned out to not be so simple. As expected, his prep work proved rather prescient: he deviated from my game against FM Woodward on move 12, throwing me on my own. While my choice of natural development wasn’t the sharpest possible reply to his near novelty, it was good enough for this game.
As the opening turned into the middlegame, I chose a very wrong place for my kingside knight. Instead of sinking it into a powerful square from which white would be hard pressed to evict it, I sent it on a strange and completely unjustified journey, with the result that my position became quite cramped.
After inaccurate play on the part of my opponent, I missed one more chance to retain parity in the center, but the idea was incredibly hard to find unless my danger senses had been running on high alert, which they weren’t. I still thought the position looked normal enough, but there turned out to be hidden danger that I had underestimated.
While my pieces were pulling back from their active positions, I was very fortunate that he missed a tactic, which would have decided the game on the spot. As it went, play continued, though my position was still hopelessly passive.
In the darkest hours, a glimmer of light shined through. By placing his pieces in exactly the right spots (or the wrong spots, from his point of view), I was given a wholly undeserved second chance. “Tactics are what decides the game,” a loud neighbor in the hotel room adjacent to ours was once heard uttering. And the adage very well could have been proven correct in this case.
My opponent eschewed several drawing lines, seeing as he needed a positive result to achieve the precious norm. As a result, I achieved a very clearly better endgame with an extra pawn. His only long-term trump card was the advantage of the two bishops, though it was difficult to see how they could affect the result.
With time ticking relentlessly downward (there was no second time control at move 40 in this event), I inexplicably blundered the extra pawn back. At this point, though objectively the game was still in balance, the psychological advantage started to swing his way. My knights, wonderfully supporting each other, started to back up from their strong outposts, for no reason at all. And slowly but surely, the two bishops made their presence felt. It was indeed a very disappointing way to end the tournament.
The trend of the first round continued, wherein the top seeds took quick draws and the rest of the players duked it out. In the end, only FM Nico Chasin “did the deed” in my section, reaching 7/9 and taking home an IM Norm, not to mention 49 FIDE rating points!
The other IM Norm sections similarly saw one player performing just well enough to achieve a norm, with other contenders missing the required score by just half a point. Congratulations are in order for FMs Bach Ngo, Joshua Posthuma, and Ming Lu, who all reached the necessary 7/9.
This time around I took a few more knocks than I gave, but that’s the price of being in the ring!
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