I wrote a medium-to-long length review of my experience at Freestyle CrossFit on my yelp profile, & I'm providing a link to it right here: FreeStyle CrossFit review Suffice to say, I regretted going to this place.
Very important warning about Fremont Street & the Strip: If you hate secondhand smoke, avoid these places.
There are a lot of people walking around & at least half of them smoke. My eating & sleeping habits were affected so badly that I couldn't enjoy most of my meals & had a hard time finishing entrees that I normally finish without difficulty. The insides of casino hotels are usually no better since smoking is allowed in the casino areas. There may be exceptions, but I was not lucky enough to find them at the Bellagio, Caesars Palace, MGM Grand, Planet Hollywood, Westgate Las Vegas, Circus Circus, Harrah's, & the Linq.
While I did visit the Venetian & the Palazzo, I visited the second floor & thus avoided the Casinos. I detected no secondhand smoke there, but I did see a few gondoliers, as they created an indoor water area for anyone to ride a gondola in for the right price.
At Bally's, if you approach Bally's from the Las Vegas Monorail system, you can gain access to a food court where I did not detect secondhand smoke. Very important to be able to eat away from the tournament hotel & not have to worry about such bad air.
The Las Vegas Monorail takes you from the SLS Las Vegas all the way down to the MGM Grand, stopping at Westgate Las Vegas, Las Vegas Convention Center (site of a Magic Tournament during the same weekend as the Chess Tournament), Harrah's/The Linq, Flamingo/Caesars Palace, Bally's/Paris, & MGM Grand. Cost is $5/single ride, $12 unlimited for a 1-day pass, $22 for a 2-day unlimited pass, & other rates on their website. Las Vegas Monorail.
I did schedule a trip to the Hoover Dam. It is a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark. I also got to see the Mike O'Callaghan - Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, which was built to bypass the Hoover Dam. The tour guide Preston was great - he was able to explain in detail how it was conceived, the construction process, & lots of other interesting facts about the Hoover Dam. The exhibits are very interesting - they even had one exhibit about special words the workers used while on the job.
I highly recommend you go & visit. It is between 60-90 minutes southeast of Las Vegas.
The National Open is one of the most efficient, large-scale tournaments that I have ever been to. In four of the first five rounds, the total starting round time delay was all of 3 minutes. This was so small that I had to be told that rounds started late & the TD staff was angry that lateness occurred. (For comparison, when I last played in the World Open, 20-minute delay to a round was a good round.) The TD staff are on point about enforcing rules & settling disputes, & no controversies that I know of erupted.
Now, I haven't finished analyzing all my games yet, but I show you my Round 3 win because I believe that the positional pawn sacrifice/breakthrough is something I struggle with even as recently as a year or so ago, & this is more of an attacking style game that would be interesting to readers. Attacking players can find the buildup & breakthrough fascinating, while positional players can recognize that attacking the king was the only correct strategy here. (Also showing this to you since it breaks the pattern of me typically showcasing an ending of some sort.)
(I apologize for ampersands not showing up in the text - it is my kryptonite. I love using the ampersand, but ChessBase notation doesn't react well to it.)
I do have an interesting Queen vs. two Rooks game that I would like to show you, but I have not yet finished analyzing this game & this may be a separate post. (Of particular contention is where I believe White has an advantage in a certain variation with the engine agreeing, but the play looks very difficult to execute & I'm not certain that these best moves can be found naturally.)
One of the interesting things about this tournament is that in the last round, with Black having draw odds, the winner gets the board & the set. I won my last round outright, so I was able to go home with an extra board & set as shown here.
This finally explained to me why I occasionally see National Open Chess Boards - the organizers give them away at the end of the tournament! This is very nice of them!
I finished with a 3.5 out of 6, not enough to win money. However, the organizers gave $50 gift certificates to the plus score players (for the uninitiated, a plus score is a score that is above 50%.), so I was able to walk away with a few extra chess books. I'm not going to object to getting something in my third out-of-state tournament out of three out-of-state tournaments this year.
The tournament organizers will apparently mail a commemorative DVD with the pictures, games, newsletters, & more. When I receive that DVD, I will post a picture of it. So I guess there will be an addendum post to cover the DVD image & the Queen vs. two Rooks game I promised you.
And that concludes Nevada, State No. 18. #fiftystatesofchess
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