On Friday I played in my first ever chess tournament! After years of online chess, I decided it was time to play in a live tournament of classical chess. Here are the details of it, the experience, and the game itself.
The Deets
The tournament is taking place in the basement of a church in Lansdale through the North Penn Chess Club and anyone can sign up. It consists of three games, one a night, over three Fridays, this past Friday being the first one. As far as tournaments go, it’s about as informal as it gets. They do this every month, a lot of the people know each other, and there’s nothing on the line except $15 a person and bragging rights. However, it is USCF rated, so it is a real tournament.
The time control is classical which means the games are LONG, each player has 90 minutes to make their moves plus 10 seconds for every move they make. My game on Friday took over three hours. For reference, my average game of online chess takes about five minutes.
Fortunately for me, as an ‘unrated’ player, I am paired against the weakest grouping of players.
The Experience
First, who goes to a chess tournament? On Friday, there were 22 entrants, all male, and I would say they were about what you’d expect – mostly old guys (60+) who are the dad-joke type, high schoolers in the chess club, and then a handful of us in the 30 – 50 range where I am self-declaring that I am the most normal person.
For the three hours that I sat there during the game it was dead quiet except the one notable exception of a guy behind me farting during his game, then his opponent started laughing, then he started laughing, and then most of the playing hall started laughing. You’re allowed to get up and walk around, use the bathroom, etc., you can’t use your phone at any point, and it was pretty much all business.
My Game of Chess
I drew black against a 16 year old who was rated 1500. I introduced myself and he was pretty awkward, no surprise.
You can see the full game with comments here, but here are the highlights:
- I forgot to hit the clock on both the first and second move. Without saying anything he hit it for me, seemingly annoyed. I apologized and didn’t forget again.
- I played the wrong move on move 2, b5 instead of c5, just a complete brain fart, allowing him passed a and b pawns. For most of the game I felt it was relatively even and that I’d lose in the endgame with those two pawns being the deciding factor.
- There was a winning tactic on move 11 after he castled with Nxd3, Qxd3, Ba6, that I really should have seen but missed. Always calculate captures!
- I was able to build up an attack on the king side while my opponent just never pushed his queen side pawns and I felt like I was going to win until move 31: gxh3, he immediately played g3 and I was really disappointed that I hadn’t calculated that.
- I kept fighting as I had pressure on the king and he DID slip up with 48 Nf2, which was winning on the spot for me, but after Qf3+, Kg1, I had about 30 seconds on the clock and didn’t see Qxg3+ which was the obvious game-winning move. Pretty bummed I missed it but also can’t be too mad since I had no time. He was also short on time which is probably how he played Nf2 in the first place.
Once he mated me on move 51 with Qh8# I put my hand out and we shook, him being the winner. He let out a huge sigh and whispered “that was a great game“. We whispered for 30 seconds about a move or two and then he left.
In one sense, I would’ve felt bad had I won after his blunder on move 48. Obviously that’s part of the game, you can be completely winning then lose due to one big mistake, but this kid clearly felt the pressure and did in fact play a losing move. It would’ve ruined his night, and frankly I was fine with losing, I was just happy to play my first classical game.
It’s hard to explain, but I felt like I was the stronger player. Don’t get me wrong, neither of us played ‘well’ as you can see in the analysis, but I could just feel him missing some obvious moves / ideas and I think if we played 10 more times, as I get more comfortable OTB, I’d win 6 or 7 of them. That’s the good part though, is I’ll get to prove that in the future if I keep playing.
All in all, I’m really happy I went and am honestly looking forward to playing again next week. I think some people would go from five minute games to three hour games and say “this isn’t for me“, but I was genuinely locked in / interested for three straight hours. At no point did I feel bored or tired.
Just goes to show, keep putting yourself out of your comfort zone and good things may come!
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