We will see the game against Bram. If you’re familiar with my first post on the website, you will notice it is the same opening choice for white. It works well at and above my level 😉

I wasn’t particularly nervous to face this young fellow. I lost against the same FM that Cato faced in the previous round, so I figured I had already been through the worst part of the tournament. The most interesting moment of the game happened around move 9. I thought I got a great position out of the opening, so I decided to test his ego and offer a draw. After this, he thought about the position for about 30 minutes, and then played an inaccurate move. After that, it quickly went downhill for him, as I continued to play good moves in a closed position with pressure on his clock. Eventually, I was able to sacrifice my knight and both rooks in multiple ways to produce an inevitable mating attack

Below you can see my scorecard for the tournament. I finished very strongly. I’m gaining about 50 elo rating, so now I’m officially a 2000 FIDE-rated player. I won the rating prize for best performance under 2000, finishing 31st out of 226 people. We will be returning next year!