austin city blitz tournament

Last saturday it was my second visit to Austin chess club. and I must say there are a lot of things San Antonio chess club (SACC) can learn from them - at least I was impressed.

To start with:
1. Drew S does a fantastic job of inducing that welcome feeling in the club and is very very approachable. Full marks for him.
I tried to do this on Friday casual chess nights in Borders when I was in San Antonio, but I must say somehow you dont feel it in SACC-though to be fair, I would not say that
SACC people are not friendly. Maybe they just need to show it more and in a better manner.
2. Lorry managed the Austin city blitz tournament very well. In an embarrassing incident (involving me of course :-) ), I completely forgot I move I just made- I though I played my rook
from b3 to b2 to f2, but in effect I made it move directly from b3 to f2. And not only that, I was thoroughly convinced that I moved it from b3 to b2 to f2. thankfully, there was
a spectator who saw my illegal move and I realized that I might be wrong.
3. Though personally I still fell that the rule of charging $10 extra to non austin chess club members is complicated, I can understand that since they provide the sets and clocks,
it is logical.
4. If you have any question about any rule-you can get a pretty good explanation and answer from Drew. I can just compare it to our SACC TD Martin Gordon whose only reply to
any query is - "Its tournament director's discretion". Anyways, there are many stories about how imbalanced and illogical some of the decisions in San Antonio tournaments have been
in the past, it would suffice to say that the tournament director behaved far from ideal (and fair). In some cases I doubt that he even thought about the decisions,
it was more of a case of speaking first without thinking, and then justifying whatever has been said. In any case, the tournament organization have room for improvement.
5. i was pleasantly surprised to see the thank you statement from drew for san antonio players who participated in the tourney. again +1 for him and austin chess club.

i am sure that some of my views could possibly be biased coz of my bad experiences in san antonio tournaments, but unfortunately there are many other players both in san antonio, and other cities who would concur to my observations.

anyways, for the time being, i am taking time off from chess and concentrating on my new job. maybe by nov end i would be in shape to play a tournament. till then....

disaster strikes

world open has gone horribly bad so far for me. i lost 5 of my past 7 games - the last time i lost 5 games it took 6 months and 5 tournaments....looking back at the games, i think i am getting blind when playing with the real chess board, on the computer screen i rarely miss a move - here i dropped an entire rook in a winning position, and lost numerous pawns in other games. not sure how to increase the board vision, except practising always on a real board. lets see how i do in the remaining 2 games.

so it begins....

i mean the blog :-) funny thing how i like all words starting with "z" - and to the credit of german language, chess terminology is full of them.

anyways, this is my space to add to the growing list of frustated amateurs who never really understand why their game (and more visibly their ratings) never improve. now i do not want to convey the impression that everybody could be a GM, but at the same time, i do not believe that one doesnt improve at all if he really tries to.after all, as a famous author said, u can reasonably expect to become a world class player in any sport, if u devote 10000 hours of systematic study.

i am a decent 1900 uscf player right now, and to be fair, i just started the systematic study around a year back. before that all the chess i knew consisted of some simple tactics, the what-ifs, and a basic understanding of the mate patterns. but like many others, the hard part is going beyond this, and the first step in that direction would be to cross 2000.

looking back at my games, one thing is for sure-i missed many wins (some against masters and experts) simply coz i play too fast-or rather without thinking. and many i lost from a drawn position coz of the same reason. and i think in chess, one is only as good as his weakest move. funny enough, (or tragic whichever way u look at it), i was NEVER in time trouble in any of my games, whether i won, drew or lost. and i mean even in G/30 games. so, first thing i need to do is time management, and play slow. lets see how much it helps.

i am going to play in the world open this year in U2000 category - hope to perform better than my last tournament.