On the weekend of the 20th/21st, I decided to play in a local London Congress. I knew I needed to play more games and when you normally have to pay the cost of travel and accommodation a local tournament would be relatively cheap to attend!
We had to play 3 rounds on Saturday and then the remaining 2 on Sunday. Peter Sowray won the event with an impressive 5/5. You can find the results (though not very clearly laid out) here. For some reason, I’m second on the list but I came 3rd= with 7 other people in a field of 18.
In England, it’s very common for tournaments to be spilt into 3 sections an Open, Major and Minor. I find this quite a strange way to have things especially when they are causing losses for the clubs but I believe the issue is that players wouldn’t want to play in a grade above them which personally I find strange. The only way that I will improve is playing stronger players and learning how to better my game. In New Zealand, we have a couple of tournaments where it’s divided into sections but on the main part we have an Open and a Major and most of the time it’s just one big group. I can understand having lots of section if you have hundreds of participants but when the total amount of participants were 72 players.
My own chess was filled with mistakes even though I got a very good score. I managed to put my opponents under pressure and handled the time trouble quite well.
17 Maroroa, Sue Y……….. 277113F w1+ b14+ b12- w13= w4= 3 / 5
I think I performed above 200 grade which Elo equivalent is 2150+ (I’m not very good at the conversions). It’s a very good tournament especially if you live in London and if my schedule allows it, I’ll be back next year.