April Calvin

At the April Calvin this month, 9 others came out to battle. I did not know this before, but Antowine changed the format back to 4 rounds and G45. It is also only $10 to enter now. (Not to mention the free pizza.) My mother drove Adam Dehollander and I tothe tournament, hoping enough people would show up to be able to play.

The turnout was actually not bad, but Antowine did combine the sections.

In the first round, I got paired against Adam. I was black, and played a Queen's Indian.  White made a few mistakes, and missed a couple of pins, and I ended up winning.

In the second round, I was playing Dennis Bailey. We had played before at the 2011 Michigan Open, and he was black in that game as well as this one. In our game before, he played the Slav, and waited to castle until I castled. After I castled kingside, he decided to try for an attack, and castle queenside and then storm my position. Even though I won a piece for a pawn, his attack was to strong and he ended up winning. I learned from that game, and didn't let the same thing happen twice. In our game now, he played the Slav, but I waited and developed on the queenside and made him castle to either side to know what to do next. Castling is usually safe, but is also very committal, and something you can not easily undo. Our game went on to be a draw in a same color B+P endgame.

In the third round, I was playing Bill Ignasiak as black. I tried to surprise him in the Sicilian by playing 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6. This surprised him, but since I did not study up on the theory behind the move, I got a slightly worse position and an Isolated pawn. That isolated pawn later got pinned and captured. He was now up a pawn, and in a better position. Later, I got in time pressure in an already bad position and ended up losing.

In the last round, I was playing Duane Croel, the top player, and lost after taking back a piece with the wrong pawn and exposing my king and queen on a newly created open file.

Overall, only 1.5/4.0, but I will have many chances in the near future to make up for that. ; )

One last thing before I finish. Today, I looked around on the USCF site, uschess.org, and discovered this.

All the way at the bottom (98) but I am still very excited about making the list.

I hope everybody had a great Easter and/or Spring Break! I met with family members on Sunday to eat food, talk, and play sports.

That is it for now, but I'll be writing again in the next week. Adios!