Indiana State Championships Under Way

So, Garrett, Ben, and I are at the State champs in Logansport. Nate is also playing, though he's not staying with us. I'll give you a taste of my games. This one was from the second round. I'll post the rest later.

Rampley-Lewis.pgn


And there you have it. Certainly not error free, though not a horrible game. I'm using my time better, though I'm still not doing comprehensive safety checks every move. As usual, I did have a disappointing loss (in some ways the best of the three I've played), and I'll post that tomorrow.

Garrett is rolling the open section, 3-0. Took out GaterNation in the last round, like 4 non theoretical moves in a Dragon. Ben beat Jim Dean on time, after which Jim promptly withdrew. I would have too. Losing on time sucks ass, and I wouldn't have wanted to drive here from Ft Wayne three nights if I wasn't going to win any money. Funnily enough, the field is so weak that Dean probably still would have won 1st. I'll post more about this this coming week, maybe from the Cleveland Clinic. Wish me luck on the surgery.

Indiana Class Champs mostly completed!

So as usual, the tournament started well, then I got tired, which made me lazy, and I started playing poorly. Ben and Garrett also had bad third round games, both of which ended in losses due to time trouble, so we withdrew and went to see 'Stepbrothers', which sucked. In any case, I'm including my 1st and 2nd round games, which were of decent quality. The third round was a a Grunfeld that looked like it was played by two 7 year olds who needed naps. My opponent was much worse out of the opening, then in my impatience and fatigue I went into a significantly worse ending. Then I threw away the draw. On the upside, at least I wasn't hung over. Here are the games.

R1.pgn


Not a bad game at all, though I did have about a 150 point rating advantage. Only one major error, and even it was a few ply down the line. My goal this tournament was to play safely, not overextending due to impatience. I think this game was a good example of that style of play, with the possible exception of Ng5. Here's the 2nd round:

R2.pgn


Not as good of a game from my side, but my opponent was very slightly higher rated than me and this was the first time I'd gotten to play the Classical Sicilian in OTB chess. As I said, the last game isn't worth showing, it was such a comedy of errors. I won't come to this tournament again unless it's expanded to two days. It's too much chess and I can't keep my play up for 4 rounds (or even 3, frankly) of long time control chess. 2 long games/day. No more than that. It's just not worth the money or the frustration. By the way, aren't the Fritz verbal annotations strange? The one about the cat seems like a bad German translation to me, but who knows. Every country has its own weird sayings. What the hell does 'by and large' mean, anyway? What sort of sense would it make translated into German? I'll leave you with that thought.

IN State Class championships in beautiful Kokomo approaching

For those of you who don't know, the Indiana state class championships are coming up, to be held once again in Kokomo IN. That means that Garrett, Nate, maybe Drew, Ben, Quinn, and I will be making the godforsaken drive up 31 to Kokomo. If you've never taken this drive, then let me tell you that the only thing worse than this indescribably dull stretch of highway is the even duller stretch of highway that extends to South Bend. Thank God we're not holding the tournament there.

Which raises an interesting question: why Kokomo? It's not centrally located at all. And as it happens, Indiana does have a large, centrally located city where it might make more sense to hold the tournament. Yet our state tournaments are often in either Kokomo or, even more oddly, Logansport (this may just be because Logansport is the home of former ISCA honcho Gary Fox, whom we all thank for his hard and extremely thankless work in chess). Is this to accommodate the South Bend contingent? Or is it just cheaper?

In any case, I expect a sub par performance on my part, not least because the drive to Kokomo almost forces you to drink once you get there just to stave off crippling boredom. I think if I lived in Kokomo I'd have to be drunk all the time. Seriously, the main reason I'm not predicting a win is that the tournament is a 4 round, g/90 affair conducted in one day. For those of you a little slow in the math department, that's up to 12 hours of chess on a Saturday. That's a shit ton of chess in one day. I bet the average player loses between 100-200 points of effective strength between the first and last games. It's a grueling schedule.

And it's played at a UAW hall. Leaving aside the stale scent of despair the sits on this (or probably any) automakers union hall, the place is fairly pleasant to play in. There are swings outside for Maxx to frolic on, picnic tables for folks to sit on and watch Roger stalk geese, and a pleasant breeze that luckily leaves you upwind from Kokomo proper (just kidding. I really have no particular issue with Kokomo, other than having to take 31 to get there). It's no Sheraton conference center, but it's not bad for what you pay to enter.

So as you can probably tell I'm really looking forward to this one. Last year I locked my keys in my car and lost my last round game in like 11 moves (probably because I just returned from a wine junket in Napa), and just generally sucked ass. Let's hope that this year is a little more successful. I don't want to drive to Kokomo for nothing.