The tournament was larger than previous years and quite strong. Eric Hansen played along with many other + 2000 players. My first game was against the number two rated player in the tourney Nenad Ristovic (2312). I played a very good game against his French defence up until time pressure started to make me rush some of my moves. I think it was still fairly equal until move 30 then I made some small errors and then I blundered on my 36th move when I missed his simple intermesimo QxB+ move and resigned immediately down a piece.
Just before 6.c3
2009-03-14 r1 Ristovic.pgn
My second game was against Simon Ong (1638). He played the English and I responded with a Kings Indian Defense set-up. I haven’t played the KID for some time but this one developed just like I remember my old games from years ago where I storm the kings side. I was able to open the h file and get a strong bishop posted on f3 and finished it with a nice mate.
I'm just about to play 12.Rb8
2009-03-14 r2 Ong.pgn
Round three was against Roy Yearwood (2100??). The last two times as White against Roy he played 1…Nc6 and I was able to get very good positions but accepted his draw offers. This time he also played 1…Nc6 but unfortunately I played the opening badly and dropped the exchange. At this point I knew I had blown the game and thought about resigning but instead decided to play on since I had nothing else to do that evening. It’s funny when you have nothing to lose anymore, all the pressure of the game drops away and sometime in a more relaxed state you can see things more clearly. I think I played pretty well from this point on creating continuous little tactical threats around the board like a fly bothering a sleeping dog. Roy seemed to be on the defensive even with his superior piece strength and had more trouble finishing me off than he should have. Eventually though he found a tactic that ended my threats and at that point I resigned.
Once again the picture was taken while I was thinking. This time I'm going to play 5.Be2.
2009-03-14 r3 Yearwood.pgn
I withdrew in round four. Unfortunately the course that I had booked in for the 16-17th had been cancelled and I had a long drive ahead of me to get back to Lloyd for work on Monday morning. I planned on withdrawing in the last round but withdrew a round earlier when I saw I was going to be paired with an 800 player. That’s probably not the right thing to do but I didn’t have any enthusiasm for such a game Sunday morning, plus my kids kept telling me how much they missed me and wanted me to come home every time they called. My Rp was 1866 and I gained a big 4 points!
Eric Hansen won the tournament with 5/5. Jan Lazo, Jesse Beaudin, and Rick Pedersen tied for second 4/5. Young Lazo's performance was particularly impressive with victories over Ristovic, Yearwood and T. Kaminski.
The Calgary chess club is a nice facility but there are a couple of drawbacks. First the skittles room is at the back so visitors have to walk through the playing room to get to it. Secondly their H-A/C fan is very loud and goes on and off constantly during the games.
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