Upcoming Tournaments

I figured I'd start a thread where we can post upcoming tournaments we wish to attend. I believe this will help motivate ourselves to get off our lazy bums and play some solid tournament chess!

I'll start with my upcoming tournaments:

• June 22-23rd - 1st Annual Summer Solstice Tournament. G/90, 30s in. Loveland, Colorado.

• June 29-30th - Albuquerque Open. Game/90,5s delay. Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Let's see how many people we can get to participate in this thread

Good idea. Making commitments is a good motivator.

I don't have anything until September.

Good luck in Loveland and Albuquerque

VG

Cheers Victorian Gent!

I also wanted to add on here that I will be participating in the Denver Chess Club's monthly tournament. They meet every Tuesday and have a G/70 + 5s delay USCF rated game that gets added to the monthly tournament. 

I went for the first time last night and won with white against a 1531 USCF Player (Joseph P Haines).

The last couple days I've been going over the ICS opening repertoire and decided to use the 1.e4 openings as I feel I'd be more comfortable with the middlegame positions. I paid particular attention to the Ruy Lopez as I've never played it before and that's what I opened with last night. I managed to come out of the opening a pawn up and held on. My opponent made a horrific blunder about 25 moves into the game which allowed me to get a backrank mate. I wish I knew how to post the game here. If someone would be so kind as to point me in the right direction with that it would be much appreciated :]

Anywho, even though my official rating is still 1135 (June supplement), I don't want to waste my time playing in the U1400 sections at my two upcoming tournaments. I'll be playing in the U1800 sections unless you guys think I should switch them off(ie. One tournament play U1400 and the other U1800). Let me know what you think!

Looks like your plan is working, so stick with it. Congratulations!

PawnCustodian: Thanks!   Would you suggest I play in the U1800 section in both tournaments or switch it up?

Depends. If you want to come come with some prize money, then play down.  If you arel looking for stronger competition play up.

Seriously, if you are having good results such as you say here and you are not having time management issues I think you should do just fine in the under 1800 sections.

I wish.  Tournaments just cost too much for me atm.  I can participate only at my club and one or two events a year.

BorgQueen wrote:I wish.  Tournaments just cost too much for me atm.  I can participate only at my club and one or two events a year.

Amen! If you do 90 games a year and live in an area where you need to travel the expenses will be over $2,000 us a year!

I take it to you two don't live in an area where there's lots of tournaments going on year round? :[

When I lived in New Mexico that was also the case for me. Colorado has anywhere between 10-15 events/yr and none of which are more than 60 miles from where I live so I lucked out by moving here.

Out of interest, are your club games rated also?  Here in the UK our internal club games can be submitted to the English Chess Federation for rating (we call it grading) as long as we play them under the right conditions.  That means I get 28 rated games a year already from just the club tournament (our top division is a 15 player, 2 round all-play all).  Then our inter-club matches are also rated.  Since we have teams in 2 leagues, I get about 15-20 rated games this way also.  So overall, I get up to 50 rated games a year from just belonging to a chess club.  I supplement this with 5 or 6 weekend tournaments a year (usually within a max driving time of 90min from home, so no need for hotel bills) and also try to play at the Hastings tournament over the New Year (although this is my extravagance and involves up to 10 nights in a hotel, meals etc...so gets expensive).  By this means I get close to 100 rated games a year.

By the way.  If anyone reading this has access to a chess club, but does not go along...man, you are so missing the best part of chess.  I would say that those folk who only play Internet chess (or worse, just against their computer) are missing 80% of the experience. 

VG

To Sir Nemo's question about whether he should play in 1400 or 1800 sections in upcoming tournament. 
I think the conventional wisdom is that if you are trying to improve, then you should aim to play people who are a bit stronger than yourself the majority of the time, but don't neglect playing folk at same or weaker strength (which is important to develop your technique for beating weaker players, and also for developing technique in general).  I have heard the advice to play up in 2 out of every 3 tournaments.  My experience is:
- no need to play up if you are in the middle or lower end of the range for your section anyway.  Usually in the UK tournaments, the sections are arranged such that I am roughly in the middle of a 25 grading point range (equal to 200 USCF/FIDE rating points) so if I am winning, then I generally get to play players stronger than me anyway.
- I will never, ever, ever again play in a section where my rating is close to the top of the band.  My experience of doing this twice in the past is that you are on a "hiding to nothing" and you spend the whole tournament trying to protect your rating against players like Sir Nemo (who play stronger than their official rating).  If you win games, you get a few points...if you lose, you lose a shed load of rating points!
- If you do play up, be aware of a few pit-falls: (1) few people are going to accept draw offers from you (actually that's good coz you shouldn't be offering draws anyway...play to win and learn from your losses)
- Inevitably, sometimes you are going to be close to the bottom of the results table.  That can be bad for the ego, and also in my experience  may mean that you will get more than your fair share of byes and no-shows by opponents (its not much fun driving 60 miles to a tournament on Sunday morning to find that your opponent has done a silent withdrawal).

Hope this is food for thought
VG

Very good advice Victorian Gent! Much appreciated feedback :]

I think in my first upcoming tournament(next weekend), I will play up in the U1800 section. I'll gauge where I'm at after the tournament based on my performance. If I do well, I'll play in the U1800 section in the following tournament the next weekend. Obviously if I perform poorly, I'll move back down to the U1400 for the June 29-30th Albuquerque Open. 

As for the club being rated: Yes, every week's games are rated and submitted at the end of month for a month long tournament.

There are tounaments going on quite often here, but at something like $100 entry fee, plus travel to the event and back 10 times, plus parking costs x 10, I'm looking at $200 to compete in one event, with almost zero chance of getting anything back.  

Play in 5 events like that in a year and I'm looking at $1,000.  I just can't justify that.

BorgQueen - Those are pretty high entry fees. I don't think I've ever payed more than $40 for an entry fee. However, I'm sure the tournaments in your are are probably a little more prestigious. 

The one thing I forgot to check with my finances is the cost of travel. Now that you guys are mentioning it the lil lightbulb turned on in my head. Back to the books to figure out if I can even afford my two upcoming tournaments

The tournament I am referring to there is a nine-round event (possibly one more night for presentations)... called "Interclub" here.  There are several similarly priced tournaments throughout the year and a few shorter ones, played over just two days or so.  The smaller ones are around the $50 mark, but still hard to justify.

Yes, fuel costs have to be counted these days.  Fuel used to be quite easy to afford, but these days, at $1.50 per litre, it adds up fast.

We should be so lucky!!  Fuel in UK is running at £1.35 which converts to Australian $2.27 per litre.  Diesel is even more.

$2.27 per litre? Holy crap 

I just paid $3.73/gallon to fill up my tank a little bit ago. That comes out to about $0.99/litre

All that money... who ends up with all that money.... and what do they do with it all?

Too much greed in this world nowadays.

In the UK 64% of petrol cost is tax!  That means that the government is effectively adding nearly 200% on cost onto what the oil companies charge. 

Given that I have to pay income tax too, that means that for every £ I earn, if I spend it on fuel, the government get 76% of it in tax.

BQ is right..too much greed. 

Better to live in the world of chess:)
VG

And here I was thinking of possibly relocating to the UK in the next couple years. Thanks for helping me make up my mind guys

Ok so I've gone through and and found all the tournaments I wish to participate in for the remainder of the year. Let's see how this goes :]

• 1st Annual Summer Solstice Showdown, June 22 - 23, 2013 (Loveland, CO)
  
• Albuquerque Open, June 29 - 30, 2013 (Albuquerque, NM)
  
• Pikes Peak Open, August 10 - 11, 2013 (Manitou Springs, CO)
  
• Monument Open V, August 17 - 18, 2013 (Palmer Lake, CO)
  
• New Mexico Open, September 28 - 29, 2013 (Albuquerque, NM)
  
• Tri-Lakes Open, October 5 - 6, 2013 (Palmer Lake, CO)
  
• Denver Open, Date TBD late October-early November (Denver, CO)
  
• Winter Springs Open, December 7 - 8, 2013(Manitou Springs, CO)
  

These tournaments along with the weekly rated games at the Denver Chess Club adds up to a total of 67 USCF rated games. I hope I can actually participate in all of these tournaments. Here's to wishful thinking!

Wow...good luck with all those.

My first tourney will probably be Manchester at end August.  By then hope to have completed Smirnov's GM Secrets and his openings course (i.e. essentially done his +300 spurt).  But getting through the practical stuff from GM secrets is proving a marathon...average 8 hours per game for Task 4.  I have never studied so hard in my life!
VG

Victorian Gent - Keep us posted on your progress with that course! If you have success with it, I may put ICS on the backburner and attempt that course in it's entirety before attempting the ICS course in it's entirety. I'd like to know what your rating is before and after, etc :] 

Also, best of luck in your upcoming tournament in August! I'm sure you'll do well!

Wow, I'd love to play in that many tourneys/games.  I am lucky to get 18 rated games a year.

Yeah looks like I'm going to have to skip out on August 17-18th tournament(Monument Open V) as some friends are coming up from New Mexico that weekend. Regardless, I'd be truly blessed and happy if I can atleast play in half of these tournaments. My goal is obviously all of them but as we know, life gets in the way.