The first table on the left features the last game I played, shown below!

This weekend’s tournament went above and beyond my expectations. I had just finished the 4th cycle of the Woodpecker method, with the first 500 exercises. The first round was already a total wake-up call because my opponent blundered a piece after 10 moves, but I still lost. It was strategically lost when I decided to put my king on g8, blocking all my undeveloped kingside pieces. Luckily, my mental was really good for the second game and I managed to bounce back with a win.

In the third round, I lost out because of an opening blunder against 1.c4. My opening pawn moves were good! But I misplaced my queen and lost a pawn. After that, I could have fought harder tactically speaking, but instead, I traded all the major pieces and was left without any chances.

The last game was a lot of fun to play. I had already scored 2/5, when my goal was to reach 1,5/6. After an opening mistake by my opponent, I decided to play a fun game with a double pawn sacrifice as black, after which a lot of other sacrifices followed to keep the initiative. You can see the game below.

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!