What a strange tournament I had this weekend at the Western States Open. But before I talk about my experience, let me recap the bigger picture.

The victor was Grandmaster Fidel Corrales Jimenez, with a score of 5-1. He benefited a bit from the fact that the other two grandmasters, Sergey Kudrin and Enrico Sevillano, played against each other in the last round and had a short draw, while Jimenez was paired against Ezra Paul Chambers. I don’t mean to criticize Chambers, who impressed me a lot when he scored a Fischer-like 8-0 in the Mechanics Institute tournament I played in this summer… but scoring 8-0 against experts and low masters isn’t the same as playing a 2600 player in the last round of a big-money tournament. Jimenez ground him down in a long endgame.

Overall, the tournament had 200 players, a decent turnout, but it had many fewer titled players than it used to. Only the three GM’s and two IM’s. In the old days, ten years ago, this tournament routinely drew ten to fifteen titled players. I’m not sure what the problem is. It seemed to me that, in general, the casinos in downtown Reno are not as crowded as they used to be, and I wonder whether Internet gambling and the increasing number of casinos in California is starting to hurt their business. Of course, that shouldn’t affect a chess tournament, but if Reno in general is becoming a less attractive tourist destination, perhaps it might.

My tournament got off to a good start when I won as Black in the first round against a master, Mike Zaloznyy, who is actually a Facebook friend of mine. It was a bummer to have to win a game against a friend, but at least I was happy with my own performance.

In round two I got to play on the stage (the top five boards, which are roped off and have spectator seats set up) against grandmaster Enrico Sevillano. I was bummed this time to have my second Black in a row; however, I was happy when he went into the Ruy Lopez and I was able to trot out the Bird Variation, one of the solidest parts of my repertoire. But in spite of all the blog posts I’ve written about it, I still made a stupid move-order error! This made the difference between having an absolutely fine position that I would be glad to play against any grandmaster, and having an iffy position. Unfortunately, grandmasters annihilate iffy positions. I’m sure I will learn a lot from studying Sevillano’s play in this game.

So in general I was satisfied with the first two rounds, but then in the last four rounds the wheels absolutely came off. Round three: loss as White in the King’s Gambit against a master, Dale Haessel. Round four: loss as Black in the Marshall Defense (Queen’s Gambit Declined) against a master, Eric Li. Round five: lifeless draw as White in a French Defense against an A-player, Ruth Haring. Round six: loss as White in another King’s Gambit against an expert, Adrian Kondakov. Final result: 1½-4½. My confidence at the end was absolutely shot, and that win against Mike Zaloznyy seemed like a lifetime ago.

I am not going to bore my readers (yet) with a lengthy treatise on all the things I did wrong. Suffice to say that I played badly in all stages of the game. In my four losses I played four opening variations that I thought I knew well. Yet in every one of those games I stood worse by move 20. Tactically, I was missing stuff. Obvious stuff. Things that I would see in two seconds if you showed me the position from a cold start (a diagram in a blog, for example). Strategically, I was not coming up with effective plans. On the few occasions when I had decent positions, they just seemed to go downhill.

Things I think I learned from my failure (and what I’m going to do about them):

About 95 percent of my training over the last couple years has consisted of playing against the computer. This approach is not working. I need to play more humans, and I need to get back to formal studying. Openings have always been a suspect part of my game. I play risky openings. I don’t apologize for it; how can I give up on the openings I love? I don’t want to give up on the King’s Gambit, I just want to play it better. Nevertheless, I think that as a radical change and experiment, I might go to my next tournament with the intention of playing only boring, old-man openings. Just to see what happens. I’ve gotten away from the habit of making a short blunder check before I move. It’s my foolish pride, to think that I can ride a bike well enough not to need training wheels. Time to put the training wheels back on. In general, I’m just not looking at enough moves. Very often my “analysis” is one move deep. “If I do that, he’ll do that, and I don’t like the way that feels.” If I went two or three moves deeper, in many cases the things I don’t like would have easy tactical solutions. This is something I often notice during my time-outs when playing the computer, when I can actually move the pieces around physically. In the tournament, of course, I’m not allowed to do that. But I failed to “move the pieces” around in my head. Instead I would just sit and stare at the position and think how much I hated it. If all you do is think for five minutes about how much you hate the position, it won’t bring you any closer to an answer for what you should do next. Strategically, Mike Splane’s chess parties have laid out exactly what to do when forming a plan. We’ve made a list of eight to ten questions, such as “What are the trades and which ones are good for me? What are my best and worst pieces?” and so on. But I apply these questions infrequently, at most one or two times a game. Usually I’m too busy trying not to blunder on the next move. (And in view of point #3, I’m not even succeeding at that.) Again, perhaps I need to start playing old-man chess, trying to get more of the calm positions where one can effectively apply strategic thinking.

I’d be delighted to receive any reader advice or comments. Of course, I haven’t given you much information to work with; I haven’t shown you any positions or moves from the tournament. But I suspect I will probably write at least two or three more posts with more specifics.