Tuesday, January 28, 2014

St Paul Winter Open 2014

The tournament had a good turnout despite the weather. I did well with 2.5 out of 4 (I withdrew before the last round, so I could drive home in the daylight through the blizzard)

There are important lessons for me in 3 of the games, including two Catalan's that I did not get enough out of the opening, one of which I held on to draw FM Wasiluk. My second round game was a bit of a blow out, as he missed a critical move. In the third round, I messed up tactics against P. Amarasinghe in a wild KID (much like our first game years ago), but was unable to swindle him this time. My last game was the second Catalan, and though he equalized, I was able to get to an endgame where only I had winning chances, and he made several errors.

Both Catalan's were not "mainline" and illustrated the problem with memorization of opening lines.

There was a wild card thrown into the tournament. After round 4, Charles Wynn, a class A player who had not played in the last two years, was the leader having beaten Wasiluk and Chakrasali, while the other masters had draws. Iwu beat him in the last round to win the tournament. He is one to watch.

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