I won!

All the ups and downs from my OTB tournament in Charlotte

This past weekend I played my first OTB tournament in over a year, the ALTO tournament in Charlotte, North Carolina.

I had a few goals going in: experience the sustained focus that comes with OTB chess; meet up with some friends, old and new; and expose myself to the stress of tournament chess to be a more empathetic coach for my students who are playing tournaments regularly.

I managed to accomplish those goals, but I also, somewhat unexpectedly, won the tournament! Here’s the round-by-round breakdown of how everything went down:

Round 1: Edward Dean

Going into this tournament, I made the choice to use my Chessable repertoire with the White pieces. This was part experiment, part marketing, and part pragmatism. I had a lot of ground to cover getting my Black repertoire ready, and at least I already knew the lines from my own course. I was however worried that I’d be giving my opponents full intel on all my preparation. Anyone who wanted to could simply have looked at the course and seen exactly what I was planning.

When my opponent quickly played 1. Nf3 d5 2. g3 g6, I was worried that this was exactly what happened. This line with 2…g6 is considered one of the most challenging responses at the grandmaster level, but it’s rarely played at the club level. For that reason I made a conscious decision to cover it very briefly in the course; I didn’t want to force users to memorize a bunch of lines they’d probably never see in practice. But it did mean that if someone wanted to target me with home preparation, this would be a reasonable place to go.

But my fears were quickly laid to rest when my opponent started spending a lot of time in the opening. I don’t think he checked my course. In fact, I don’t think any of my four Black opponents even knew I’ve done a Chessable course. I guess that’s bad news for my marketing efforts, but good news for my chances in this tournament.

As an aside, for your own opening preparation: this is yet more evidence that, for most players, the fear of getting hit with targeted preparation is massively overblown. All my preparation with the White pieces was completely in the open and I was literally trying as hard as I could to tell everyone about it, and none of my master-level opponents used that to prepare against me. So if you’re playing at the club level, I think you’re more than fine sticking to a single repertoire and not worrying who knows about it. Just focus on getting good at playing your openings.

In this game, my opponent landed in a passive position where it was hard to find a plan. He reacted by forcing a bunch of exchanges, but that just accentuated the apathy of his remaining pieces. I was able to win one pawn, then another, and he resigned. We were the first game done in the playing hall. In my first game after a year layoff, I had somehow managed to snare that rare bird: the “smooth game.”

Of course, I knew the sledding would soon get rougher.

Round 2: Todd Bryant

You might know Todd as Strong Chess on Twitter. We were sharing a hotel room for this event, so getting paired against each led to an odd scene in the room: 30 minutes before the round we were each sitting on our own queen bed, laptops out, trying to outguess what the other would prepare.

I know Todd as an inveterate Open Sicilian player who has played the same repertoire for years and sticks to his guns. Unfortunately, Todd knew that I knew that, and he had been preparing some alternate lines on a secret online account I didn’t know about. He discussed this in his appearance on the Perpetual Chess Podcast, but that episode didn’t drop until after the tournament, so I was in the dark. By the way, this is a fantastic episode, and I’m not just saying that because I’m friends with Todd. He did some original research on the biggest rating gains made by players in the US after certain age cutoffs, which is really interesting for adults trying to improve.

Anyway, when 1. e4 c5 2. Nc3 appeared on the board, all my Open Sicilian prep was out the window. In fact, I never got to use the Sicilian I prepared for this tournament, so I guess that will remain a secret for another day. I actually played the anti-Sicilian Todd used in this game many years ago, and I responded with some old half-remembered theory. The result of the opening was that Todd got a more comfortable position with some attacking chances.

Todd sacrificed a pawn, but in return I had weaknesses all over the board and difficulty finishing development. In the middle of stringing moves together trying to survive, I had a golden opportunity to win the game.

Black to play and win

I moved too quickly, spotting the winning line just a second after I moved. Several moves later, I had to find some precise moves to force a draw.

Black can still draw

So the result of the roommate battle was a very tense draw. After the game I told Todd, “We really should have memorized a shorter drawing line.”

Round 3: GM Alonso Zapata

My opponent in this round was the eight-time champion of Colombia – truly a legend of the game. Chess aficionados may also recall the game Anand-Zapata 1988, where world champion Viswanathan Anand lost in only six moves when he mixed up his move orders in the Petrov. Yes, it’s that Zapata!

Alonso Zapata; photo by Daniel Schipper, Charlotte Chess Center

Incidentally, some accounts claim that Anand made that famous mistake in the Petrov because he was trying to follow a previous game Miles-Christiansen, not knowing it was an arranged draw, so the moves were irrelevant (although I believe Anand himself said that wasn’t the case). Well, the Black player in that game was Larry Christiansen, who is the husband of Natasha Christiansen, who at this tournament peer pressured me into ordering an old fashioned when I had intended to have exactly one drink on the weekend, the one I got for free as a promotion when the number of entrants exceeded 100. This ended up working out for the best when our waitress insisted on using a little smoke gun to top our drinks with a wisp of smoke for additional flavor. It was actually really good. She also showed us another device that created bubbles that smelled like bubble gum, which they used to top their cosmos. I think we were her only table.

Anyway. In researching my opponent’s games, I found that he had gone for a very bad King’s Indian Defense line against my 1. Nf3 repertoire multiple times, in both online blitz and OTB. I was quite hopeful he would go into this and I would get a memorable win to promote my Chessable course, but after a bit of a think, he went for the Old Indian instead. Well, the Old Indian is a pretty sad opening (way worse than the old fashioned), and if he felt he needed to go for that to avoid my Nf3 prep I guess I can’t complain. Indeed, I built up a great position, but just at the moment when I could have really slammed home the advantage, I went for a completely mistaken plan and let him back into the game.

After some chaotic exchanges, we ended up in an endgame where I had a rook against a knight and two pawns. Objectively, it was probably drawn, but he was the one who was pressing. At the same time, his task was complicated by having only about a minute and a half against my ten minutes.

It was here that I resorted to a bit of gamesmanship, offering a draw to give him something else to think about. He declined instantly, but a few moves later blundered a pawn, completely turning the tables and giving me a winning position. Did the draw offer cause the blunder? Who knows. His time expired shortly afterwards, but by that point I was winning on the board anyway.

Round 4: IM David Vigorito

Going into this tournament, I had a strategy of committing to a narrow opening repertoire and sticking to it no matter what. That decision turned out to be a bit awkward in this round, as my weapon against 1. d4 was the Semi-Slav, which David literally wrote a book on. Even so, I stuck to my guns. Not really a difficult decision, as I didn’t have another option.

David chose to go down one of the most theoretically topical lines. From my Sam Shankland Chessable course, I knew a 25-move drawing line…but very little else. Sitting at the board, I was starting to get worried about all the alternative lines he could go for, which I didn’t know how to deal with. David, for his part, seemed to be finding his way at the board, as he was taking a lot of time for his moves. I wasn’t sure whether to root for him finding the moves I knew – which would result in a draw – or different moves, which presumably could be mistakes, but which I didn’t know how to deal with.

As it turned out, he deviated from my line on move 21. Dropped into a bizarre, imbalanced position, I immediately started to hate my life choices. Many thoughts were racing through my head.

A totally normal, chill position

“This is a completely nonsensical position that’s all about calculation, which is exactly what I’m bad at. Why did I choose the Semi-Slav???”

“I should have asked more questions while reviewing the line. Don’t I always emphasize that the opening is all about understanding?!”

“I’m going to punch Sam Shankland in the face.”

etc.

Left to my own devices, I quickly started to go astray. But I managed to pull myself together and find an exchange sacrifice, then a piece sacrifice, to keep the game going. Just when I thought it would end in a forced draw, David chose the wrong direction to retreat his king, allowing me to win his queen and the game.

Round 5: Graham Horobetz

I didn’t know Graham before this game, but I saw that his online accounts had blitz ratings of 2600+. I’ve found online blitz ratings often seem to be a better indication of how tough someone currently is than their OTB ratings, so I expected I was in for a tough battle.

Graham went for the King’s Indian Defense and when he went into a deep think on move 6, I hoped he might go for the line that I had prepared against Zapata, so I would get to use my preparation after all. But he also ended up going a different way. He used a sort of rope-a-dope strategy in the opening, refusing to fight for the center or develop his pieces. It seemed to go against opening principles, but I couldn’t find a way to get a big advantage.

Eventually we ended up in a closed position where I had more space. I managed to coordinate my pieces and increase my advantage. At some point, I even had a forced win, but it’s one of the more egregious engine lines I’ve seen and wasn’t remotely on my radar during the game.

White to play and win. If you get this one, congrats on being 2900.

I still had a clearly better position, with no counterplay from my opponent. I also had a clock advantage, because he burned a lot of time in the opening. It was the sort of scenario where you can shuffle around and pose various problems to the opponent before finally breaking through. That’s what I was trying to do, but at some point I allowed a bishop retreat that could have given him some counterplay if I allowed the exchange. This rattled me more than it should have and I decided to offer a draw. The truth is, I still had a better position and more time, and I should have kept pressing for the win. From a psychological perspective this was definitely my weakest moment in the tournament.

Nonetheless, I was still in contention to take first place if I could win my last round against the tournament leader.

Round 6: WGM Dina Belenkaya

It was around this point that I began to have an odd feeling that everything was lining up just a little too perfectly. My first tournament after a year-plus layoff, half a point back going into the final round, in a must-win situation to win the tournament. Not only that, but I would have the White pieces, even though I was due for Black, giving me an additional chance to use my Chessable repertoire. A thought started to enter my mind that a win in this round could be quite good, not only for my tournament result, but indeed for my career. But I tried not to dwell on that.

My opponent for the last round would be a fitting final boss, Dina Belenkaya. Even though one of my express goals going into the tournament was to make new connections, I had been far too intimidated to introduce myself to the popular and glamorous streamer. On top of that, for the first five rounds, she had been more or less steamrolling her opposition on the chess board. Even though I wasn’t overflowing with confidence, the tournament situation made my path clear: go for the win at all costs.

Dina Belenkaya; photo by Daniel Schipper, Charlotte Chess Center

Fortunately, like my other opponents, Dina didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to review my opening preparation in advance by looking at my Chessable course. At least, I don’t think she did, because she seemed surprised by the line I took against her Slav setup and reacted somewhat poorly. Perhaps angling for a draw, she forced a series of trades, but this left her behind in development. If I had found the right line I could have won a pawn, but I missed a tactical nuance and chose the wrong square for my queen. I didn’t get the pawn, but I still had a more comfortable position.

For the next several moves it seemed like she was always on the verge of equalizing, but I kept finding ways to pose a few more problems. Finally we traded down into a rook endgame where I was still applying a little pressure. She was down to minutes on the clock. I had more time, but not by much. At this point, everything started to get a little fuzzy. I was begging my brain for just a few more minutes of focus to bring home the tournament. Somehow I managed to trap her rook on the edge of the board. Even so, I missed the simplest win, and the game went on. Finally I got a winning position with rook and two pawns vs. rook and king.

With my pawns rolling down the board, she picked up her rook, and slid it opposite mine while watching me out of the corner of her eye. It’s an old bullet trick: when all else fails, you move your rook where they can take it. If they don’t notice and play something else, you take their rook. I couldn’t help but smile. Seeing this, her hand still on the rook, she moved it one square further to safety. Or maybe I imagined it all: the whole exchange lasted just a split-second. Whatever the case, a few moves later, facing mate in two, she had to resign.

Conclusion

One of my biggest heroes is the poker player Phil Galfond. Phil is a rare combination: world-class as a competitor and a teacher. Lately he’s been posting a lot of videos to YouTube, including one about his appearance on the TV show High Stakes Poker. This came at a time in his career when he was beating the highest stakes games online, but wasn’t well-known outside of the online poker world. The appearance on HSP represented an opportunity to gain access to the potentially very lucrative world of TV poker.

He had been scheduled to play for two days of filming. On the first day, he had a run of bad cards, and mostly folded a lot – standard poker strategy. But he didn’t know that on the broadcast, the commentators were making fun of him for playing too tight. Before the second day he got a phone call that he was too boring for TV and wasn’t being invited back. Phil has gone on to do many other things – a poker training site, his own online poker platform, and now a burgeoning career as a content creator – but he never really broke into TV poker.

Phil’s friend Tom Dwan (often known by his screenname “durrrr”) was also a top online player. When Tom got his shot at TV poker, he took the lessons from Phil’s experience and went in with a gameplan: he would go all-out with bold, aggressive plays, cards be damned. If you’ve ever played poker, you know that when you go for a big play, sometimes it works out, and sometimes it blows up in your face. In Tom’s first appearance on TV, he emptied his bag of tricks… and everything worked. This performance catapulted him to poker stardom. He became a fixture on poker TV, known for his aggressive and creative style.

But that was all in the future. After the filming, Phil texted Tom to ask him how it went. Tom texted back, “As well as it could have.”

So when my friend Kamryn asked the chesspunks community on Twitter to describe how their latest tournament had gone in six words, I was ready with my answer: As well as it could have.