Matthew Koutnik

It has been roughly ten years since my last OTB (Over The Board) tournament. On Thursday night I went to my local club to play in a 10+0 Rapid tournament. 

There was a great turnout (roughly 30 players). When I attended the club regularly I was in my teenage years. When the club managed to get ten people to an event that was a huge success. A lot has changed in ten years.

I had a great tournament and finished the event with a score of 5.5/7. I had a draw against first place and lost to second place, but I managed to win all of my other games.

Here are some observations about the experience.

Simple Mistakes

One thing that stood out, was the amount of mistakes players were making. Most of the games I won stemmed from a mistake made by my opponent. In many of the cases I had a slight advantage in the position, but my opponents made mistakes that could have been avoided (such as forks and dropping pieces).

Over the past nine months I have completed daily tactics puzzles and I believe it has made a significant impact on my play. I was feeling sharp and I spotted simple tactics very quickly.

Here is a simple tactic from the game that I drew. At this point in the game I had just under two minutes left on the clock, but I spotted the tactic immediately. White to move and gain the advantage.

Nxh6 This move wins a pawn. After gxh6 the knight on f6 is no longer protected and can be captured by the queen

I still made mistakes though. 

I can recall three significant mistakes that I made during the tournament.

1. The game that I lost was a very sharp line in the Advance Caro-Kann. I spent far too much time trying to hold on in the opening (after ten or so moves I had used up five minutes on the clock). Once I made it through the opening unscathed, I relaxed, made a quick move to try and catch up on the clock and gave away an exchange for no good reason, which led to a loss.
2. In the same game I gave away my knight for free, but this was due to time trouble, having less than a minute on the clock.
3. In one of the games I won, I let my knight get trapped. Luckily I found a resource to counter attack my opponent and avoid the loss of material. Fortunately, this mistake turned out to be a good move.

Opening Lines

I played the following openings.

Black

• Slav – Exchange Variation
• Caro-Kann – Advance Variation x 2
• Queens Gambit Declined (against a “Stonewall” type structure)

White

• French Defense – Advance Variation
• Petrov Defense – Three Knights Game
• Pirc Defense

As you can see, that is a vast array of openings. Having a general understanding of the types of positions that arise in each of these openings and how to approach the opening is important. I spent most of my time ensuring that I played correctly out of the opening.

Increase In Numbers

The amount of players that turned up to play in the tournament was a huge surprise to me. There were many new faces that I had never seen before. There were also a number of familiar faces (I played against three opponents that I had played in the past). The chess scene in my home town seems to be doing much better than it was ten years ago.