The North Dakota State Chess Championship was well run. No delays that I noted. Pairings were available by email or phone 10-15 minutes before each round started, & they were also posted on https://caissachess.net/live/2636 including the standings, etc.
There were a few oddities
1) A 6 Round tournament over two days, players playing four games the first day & two games the second day. This made decisions in the third round & fourth round interesting. Most tournaments limit themselves to 3 rounds a day unless there is an abbreviated schedule.
2) A change in time control in the tournament, which usually only applies to an abbreviated schedule. We did G/75 D:05 the first day & G/90 D:05 the second.
3) I was the second highest rated player to play in this tournament.
None of these are bad, just unusual in the now 33 states I have covered. (Yes I really did reach Patrick Ewing's number)
What I am finding is that since the pandemic started, you really have to throw out the USCF "ratings" published for the tournament. More & more players have found the game online & play online much more than over the board. I'll talk about that more with regards to our first position. Still, there are times when you can tell these online players have not played over the board much, such as offering draws at the incorrect time or not writing down the moves after move 6.
Side note: the correct time to offer the draw [not claiming a draw, which is slightly different based on the method of the claim] is the period between when you make the move & when you hit the clock. Offering a draw during your opponent's move can be construed as annoying the opponent (I based an amateur team name in Parsippany on this rule if you remember - "Rule 20G - Annoying Behavior Prohibited") Offering a draw before you move is not illegal, but the opponent has the right to ask you to make your move first before responding. Once you offer the draw, you cannot take it back!
So we have a position from Round 2. My opponent said he had a 2050 rating on lichess & an 1850 rating on chess.com. These I think are higher than my online ratings, so I was forced to ignore his 1470 USCF rating. However, his inexperience over the board showed in that he stopped writing down moves after move 6. Now, since I didn't notice this until well after move 20 when the game had already turned in my favor, I decided not to make an issue out of it. I ended up with the beautiful zugzwang shown below.
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| Black to move after 46. Kg8 |
Black's pawns can't move, his King can't move, his Bishop has no safe squares to go to, & his Rook is stuck on my 3rd rank pinning my dark Bishop to stop Bxg5#. He resigned here as giving up a Bishop only slows down his demise.
My third round was the game I was struggling with the most in the first 5 rounds. Even looking back at it now, I am amazed I won this game.
My fourth round was a repeat opponent, Todd Wolf, from the last round of the 2016 US Open. He remembered me from our conversation before that game when I mentioned I was hoping to play ultimate frisbee one last time before leaving. This time around, we fought to a draw, as I won a pawn but then gave it back, & neither of us felt like we could press home any miniscule advantage on the fourth game of a long day.
Since I don't know how to display partial game replay, you'll get a bonus game - my fifth round.
The fifth round put my tournament score at 4.5 out of 5 rounds, heading into the last round vs. the only other A player in the tournament. I lost that game, which bumped my opponent at 5/6 into second place. I ended up winning the money for the Class A Prize, & since there were no other Class A players from North Dakota there, I got the Class A trophy too. (We had a funny moment where I had a double take when they said Kevin you forgot your trophy. As my fifth round opponent was also named Kevin, I thought they meant him.)
For more chess tournament pictures, please see my instagram post here or the instagram post three posts back.
Update: My rating got updated as I did the non-chess blogpost. Since my opponents were very lower-rated, my rating did not change despite the 4.5/6. So I remain at 1822.
Update #2: I found out late in the tournament that one of the participants runs her own youtube channel on her chess improvement. I regret not talking to her more about it, but I plan to view her youtube videos & her tweets soon. She played Todd Wolf to a very competitive game in I think Round 5. Here's a link to her twitter: https://twitter.com/kamrynheidi & to her youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@kamrynheidi
And that concludes the chess portion of State No. 33 for #fiftystatesofchess. I will do the non-chess stuff in a separate post coming up!
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