Lee Hyder Memorial

After a 100 point slide the past year that dropped my rating down to 1542 I was able to gain back 66 points in one tournament to go back over 1600 and into B class again. I started off in Round 1 playing a strong expert who made a mistake I was able to exploit and gain a winning position. Unfortunately I didn't know how to win it and instead of trying to find the win and risking a loss I took the draw since he was rated 500 points higher than me. He was kind enough to show me how to proceed and win the game so I got a good draw and a good lesson.


after 30. ...Rd3 31. Nf3

Round 2 was a game I should win, which I did, even though my idiot opponent decided to play it out going 101 moves and playing for more than an hour after it was hopeless. Even I know a stronger opponent up by three pawns is going to win.

The third round I played a strong A class player and the game was even all the way and I wound up with my second draw against a much higher rated opponent.

The fourth round I got to play Wayne Christensen for the first time. Since he's "only" 600 points higher than me and had the white pieces (my two draws I had the white pieces) it wasn't reasonable to expect to score this round so I tried a new defense to get some good experience with it and I did. Even though I lost I played my best so the game was a success for me as I learned from it.

The final round I got to play someone who was only 200 points higher rated than me but since I had the white pieces I decided to go for the win since. A win would get back almost all the points I've lost in the past year and confirm my feeling that even though my rating has been dropping I've been playing stronger than ever. The game was tough as I expected but I was able to get a postion I felt was winning and had my only blunder of the weekend. Luckily I was able to salvage the draw so it wasn't a complete disaster.


after 36. Rc4??

My next scheduled tournament is the LPO in Winston Salem at the end of July. I'm really looking forward to that one as my best friend is going to play in her first tournament.

And now, back to trains. I have a couple train posts I should get up in the next few days and if the election went as expected I'll be shifting my time from chess to trains.