Oops.
After my first round game I wanted to go over it cause I was mad that I blew it but I didn't to conserve my energy for the second round. This round was my only game playing Black out of 4. I was paired with Amanda Mateer, who is one of the top rated 17 year old players in the country. Against the Queen's Gambit I used to play the move order 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 c6 but I now play a different order to avoid 4.e4. For some weird reason in this game I played my old move order thinking I was protecting myself against weird Slavs that I didn't want to play. I was expecting a main line Semi-Slav (which I would have gotten if I had just played my current move order), but she fired off 4.e4. After the game she said that she had been 0-2 in this line prior to our game and she likes Black's chances but she's been playing it because someone told her to.
Every game except my last game reminds me of another loss I have played recently, so I'll include the other game as well and try to think of one that reminds me of my game in round 4.
This game comes from round 5 of my last 'real' tournament, the Western States Open in October.
11...Nd7 is forced and 12.e5 will win the bishop.
The game with Michael, who was also at the tournament in LA, came after 4 straight wins and had I won that game I would have guaranteed first place. So the pressure might have gotten to me a little bit. But somehow I am prone to these kinds of silly errors. What's funny is that in middlegame positions where little things like this are lurking around I will nearly always sniff out the danger but in the opening I am asleep for some reason. I need to reserve most of my thoughts on this topic for another post because if I start getting into them here it will become a very long discussion. But the long and the short of it is that there are certain positions where I am prone to lose interest and I basically just want the game to move along so that I can get interested in the ensuing positions. These positions are usually where I lose.
Every game except my last game reminds me of another loss I have played recently, so I'll include the other game as well and try to think of one that reminds me of my game in round 4.
This game comes from round 5 of my last 'real' tournament, the Western States Open in October.
11...Nd7 is forced and 12.e5 will win the bishop.
The game with Michael, who was also at the tournament in LA, came after 4 straight wins and had I won that game I would have guaranteed first place. So the pressure might have gotten to me a little bit. But somehow I am prone to these kinds of silly errors. What's funny is that in middlegame positions where little things like this are lurking around I will nearly always sniff out the danger but in the opening I am asleep for some reason. I need to reserve most of my thoughts on this topic for another post because if I start getting into them here it will become a very long discussion. But the long and the short of it is that there are certain positions where I am prone to lose interest and I basically just want the game to move along so that I can get interested in the ensuing positions. These positions are usually where I lose.