At Least 21 Thoughts about ALTO

This weekend I won the ALTO (At Least Twenty One) tournament at the Charlotte Chess Center and hit a new all-time-high USCF rating of 2450. This is the second time in a row I’ve won this tournament (there was another one in between that I couldn’t go to). I wasn’t expecting much, since it was my first tournament in five months and I didn’t have a lot of time to prepare, but I managed to catch a few breaks and come out on top.

Without further ado, here are at least 21 thoughts about the tournament:

1. First class is nice, but I wouldn’t pay for it. I was able to book this flight for free as a replacement for another flight to Charlotte I had to cancel because of a bad weather-COVID combo. Somehow that resulted in getting first class. It was nice to have a little more room, but not that big of a deal. But maybe a sign that I was running hot this weekend.

2. There should be more adults only tournaments. I don’t mind kids. I don’t even mind losing to kids. But it’s just a different atmosphere when there aren’t a bunch of kids running around. More calm, more…well, adult. Obviously, I think kids should be allowed to play in chess tournaments, but all clubs should consider offering some adults-only events.

3. Chess clubs should take some cues from the Charlotte Chess Center. Not only on having adults-only events, but in all areas of running a tournament. And I’m not just saying this because I seem to keep winning here. It was just a well-run event. Some other nice features were all rounds starting on time; and boards, pens, and clocks provided. It’s really nice to not have to worry about that stuff.

4. Downside of playing chess with young kids: you have no time or energy to work on your game.

5. Upside of playing chess with young kids: for the first time ever, the tournament feels easier than your day-to-day life! Just waking up on your own schedule without a crying kid is such a luxury.

6. A training plan does not have to be complicated to work. My preparation plan for this tournament was A) solve one position from Think Like a Super-GM per day, set up on a physical board, 10 minutes maximum. B) Play 2 blitz games and analyze them at night after the kids had gone to bed. I managed to pull off this plan on maybe 50% of days.

7. Your opponents aren’t that prepared in the opening! In round 3 I had Black against a 2300 player. When she played e4 I went for my Nimzowitsch Sicilian because I hadn’t prepared anything else, but I wasn’t feeling great about it. Here’s the thing, when you want to spice things up with Black, you have to take some risks. For the ~1800 players I have in mind when I design my courses, this isn’t a problem: The Nimzowitsch is like the 100th most popular Sicilian, it’s almost impossible for your opponent to be well-prepared. But I have a whole course about it with my name on it! When my opponent blitzed out the first few moves, I thought this might finally be the time I got into trouble. But she soon slowed down and played a non-critical line. A few moves later, I won a pawn with a trick I’ve used many times in blitz. Piece of evidence # 9384957 that your opponents beating you with targeted opening preparation isn’t something you have to worry about.

8. Every once in a while, your opponents are prepared. In the final round, I faced off against Todd Bryant (aka strongchess), my roommate for this and the previous ALTO. This is always interesting, because we are both opening nerds, and have discussed our repertoires extensively, so it becomes an I-know-he-knows-I-know… situation. Last time, Todd got the drop on me by using an Anti-Sicilian he had never played on any of his (non-secret) online accounts. I was fortunate to save a draw from a bad position. This time I had some additional information: I knew we were both using Kamil Plichta’s Trompowsky course. By the way, shout out to Kamil, because it worked great for both of us. I won a pretty smooth game in round 2 even though I mixed up the line, and Todd got a great position from the opening and ultimately drew vs. GM Kayden Troff. So the lines are good, but it gave me a big informational advantage: I could look up his preparation wherever I was planning to go. Given the standings going into the last round, I only needed a draw to win the tournament, so the situation called for a solid approach. I found a small twist on one of the main lines in a recent Aronian game, which was only covered in 1 line out of about 1000 in the Plichta course. Todd didn’t remember the line, I got a comfortable position, and was able to coast to a draw and tournament victory. I think he probably should have played 1. e4, which I didn’t have a great plan against.

9. Quick outline of how to prepare for an opponent: The number 1 principle is, the most important thing is to be focused to play your best, so if the preparation interferes with focus, it’s counterproductive. Number 2 principle is choose which of your openings you’ll use, never attempt to learn a new opening before the round. So if you only play one opening, the choice is already made for you. Which is fine! You can look up your opponent just to see what they’ll do and maybe review the lines you think will happen.

10. Have a hard deadline for when you will stop opening preparation and start mentally preparing to play the game. For me this is 15 minutes before the round.

11. I didn’t bother creating secret accounts to prepare for this tournament, even though it is a slight advantage. For most players this probably isn’t a concern. My first two opponents, rated around 2000, I could not find any information about at all. If you’re concerned about opponents prepping for you, you might want to avoid putting your name on your online accounts, unless you need to for coaching. But again, this whole thing of targeted prep is mostly a red herring.

12. Useful opening preparation is about having a rich understanding of the position. For example, in a Queen’s Gambit Declined against Sabina Foisor, she played a different waiting move than the one in the line I knew, and I realized I had no idea what it changed, if anything. When studying the opening, try to get in the mindset of playing it over the board, and anticipate the questions you’ll have, when you can use a course or engine to answer them.

13. If you want to win more games, play faster. I won two games in this tournament because I had much more time around move 30 in an equal or even worse position. My starting point for thinking about time management is to recognize that the average chess game lasts around 40 moves, so I need to plan to spend no more than 1/40th of my time on each move, on average. Most adults seem to play much slower than this for the first half of the game (some kids have the opposite problem of playing too quickly and impulsively). This leads to completely predictable time trouble and blunders later in the game. If you can find a way to play on schedule, you’ll improve your results.

14. Even though this gives me an advantage, I still wish time controls were shorter. My opponents’ extravagant time use early in the game doesn’t seem to lead to better decisions. I say we skip that first hour or two and get straight to the chess. It will be more fun and less stressful for everyone.

15. Jersey Mike’s rules. The ingredients are so much better than Jimmy John’s, and I’m a guy who likes Jimmy Johns. My midday ritual for this tournament was to get a sandwich from Jersey Mike’s and then an espresso and a macaron from a pastry shop next door.

16. Think about your tournament rituals and processes. In a two-round day, after the first round, I try to: 1) chug a water bottle 2) eat lunch as soon as possible 3) nap 4) prepare for the next round. I know this all sounds really try-hardy, but if you are, let’s say, an aging chess player with other responsibilities, these are edges you might need to take.

17. Everyone should have a pregame ritual. It can be very simple (for this tournament I just meditated for a few minutes), but you should have one, and do the same thing before every game. Do you think Lebron James shows up to the arena a few minutes before the game and just does whatever? Professional athletes have very specific routines for the whole day before the game to get ready. You’re not a professional athlete, but if you want to perform better, you need to take performance seriously.

18. I really like keeping a tournament notebook to write down any thoughts or observations that I want to follow up on later (“I need a more solid option for Black vs. 1. e4”).

19. The flight home is a great time to enter your games into your personal database. I got out my stack of scoresheets and entered them into the computer, along with some notes about what I was thinking during the game. I was able to get all five games entered with time to spare.

20. Chessbase is so infuriating. Something about using it on the plane caused it to freeze even more than normal. If you don’t already use Chessbase, for most players Lichess Studies are much easier. I guess you’d just have to pay for internet access on the flight.

21. I need to challenge myself. Don’t get me wrong, I get that there’s a lot of variance in winning a tournament. Sometimes things go your way, sometimes they don’t. Part of that is down to good play and part to luck. If you rewind the universe to the moment before the last two ALTOs, I’m probably an underdog to win one, let alone two. But it’s now been a few years since I’ve lost a classical OTB game. It’s too long. If I want to take my game to the next level, I need to play with the big boys. Or, to be more accurate, the little kids.

22. (I said at least 21!) I should really get back to playing Titled Tuesday.