25th Sacramento Chess Championship recap (Day 3 + Post Mortem)
Part 2. My first real weekend tournament.
Day 3
I got plenty of rest, and was feeling pretty good with a score of 3/4, two wins, two draws, heading into the final day. But, as it often happens, there were a couple young players standing in my way. For some further context, I had calculated that my rating after the first four games would have been above 1750, which is my initial results-oriented goal for 2023. So I was both excited and nervous to play some more games. However, the rating goal is kind of immaterial to why I entered the tournament — I wanted to play games. No guts, no glory.
Game 5
I got the White pieces against another kid again, rated 1299, and this time we got into a Sicilian Rossolimo:
Admittedly, I had never see the move 3…a6 before, so I was on my own and tried to play this like other Rossolimo lines I had more familiarity with. But by move 6, I was in a worse position. My opponent didn’t respond the most accurately, but I made lots of moves that were rather ill-advised. By far, the worst move I had played this tournament came in the form of 9.b4, with a poorly-conceived idea of preventing the move c6-c5. I had considered other moves that the engine preferred quite a bit more, but some how I got it in my mind I could play this move.
In fact, the entire course of this game felt like a reversal of Game 3’s narrative: I also had White in the Sicilian, but like my opponent in Game 3, I broke so many opening principles out of over-confidence in my ideas and mis-assessing my somehow unexpectedly mild advantage in development, leading to a bunch of bad ideas played in near-consecutive order.
With all that said, perhaps it’s better shown than talked about, because after this move I think I’m just worse and never really recovered.
Alas, you cannot win them all. This particular opponent finished joint 2nd in the tournament. An excellent result for him, and he was clearly the better player in our game from basically the beginning!
Game 6
This game hurt the most.
I got black against a 1276-rated teenager. We had a fun chat before-hand about how I try to treat every player like a master, because ratings, especially ratings that belong to children, are untrustworthy. I don’t want my hubris to get in the way of playing the way I should, so I try to treat all my opponents the same.
Our game started out as a Benko Gambit, but my opponent made some odd moves in the opening, and I ended up getting a huge advantage in the middlegame.

In the above position I played 12…Bb7, fearing 12…Nbxd5 13.Be4, but this was erroneous on my part because I have the very obvious Nc3 which would win a piece. Despite seeing ghosts, I accurately foresaw a hanging pawns position where my bishops would rule along the long diagonals and I would have excellent attacking potential plus an extra passer in the d5-pawn.
My position was slowly and surely growing to an insurmountable advantage, and we later ended up in this position, where I had a lot of options but not a lot of confidence at choosing the correct ones. In fact, the position was good regardless of what moves I could choose, but I still could not drum up the guts to make the right choice. My nerves were getting to me. A common chess adage is that a won game is the most difficult game to play in chess. I’m not sure I entirely agree, but I definitely get nervous when a my senses tell me a position is winning but I don’t know the plan to actually get the full point.
Here I played 25…Bxd2?!, which does not lose at all, but makes the process so much harder. I had feared that by allowing my opponent to play Ne4, he would be shutting me out of the attack, and that my plans would be frustrated. However, this is such an erroneous way to think. I was seeing SO many ghosts in this game and I don’t know why. The last time I experienced such a psychological error was a year and a half ago at the 2022 Sacramento Chess Club Team Championship, where I lost game after game after getting into such good positions in lines I knew very well. For instance, look at this position:
I did not find the mate in four, because I believed that the square e7 was controlled by the Black queen on h3. Of course, this is not the case, but mental pressure and fatigue had caused me to completely mis-visualize the position as if the black queen were on h4, so instead I played Qxa7+?? which draws, and after Kf8, I played Qa8+?? which loses because white runs out of checks, black’s king gets to safety on the queenside, and black will mate shortly.
Back to the game…
One good mistake deserves another, so after 26.Qxd2 I played 26…Rce6, missing that I had just handed over my opponent a ton of counterplay in the form of 27.Rxc5! At this point I started panicking, and tried to organize an attack on the enemy king, but with my dark square bishop so generously tossed away on d2 for a knight, I had nothing. My opponent gave me some chances, but I had started missing things and dropping a lot of material. I had seen a combination earlier that I had decided against because I lacked control of one square which allowed the king to escape, but I once again looked at this move as a desperado.
Can you see my blunder? The attack almost works.
I played 31…Ng4+?? And of course I realized the problem with it shortly after I played it. To see the problem with the idea, let’s look at a similar position, where the rook is on a different square, but otherwise we have the same material situation where white is up two pawns:
Now Ng4+!! works beautifully! Do you see why?
It’s all in the f-file.
In this dream position, Black can play 31…Ng4+!! (31…Qh2 is quicker) and the knight is immune from capture: 32.fxg4 Qf4 33.Kg1 Re1+ 34.Qxe1 Rxe1+ 35.Bf1 Rxf1. 32.Kg1 is mate in two (also true in the actual game). Otherwise, Black has a mating attack after 32.Kf1 Qg3 33.Rh7+ Kg8 34. Bc4+ Kxh7 35.Rc7 (at this point White is jettisoning material but the actual mate is inevitable) Qxc7 followed by Qg3 and White’s back-rank nightmare continues. All of this is because the f-file lacks a key defender. Yes, I had visualized and calculated all of this previously, and I thought it now worked since I can pile up against the e1 square with my queen on g3. I will share one particularly aesthetic mate in a gif, but there are so many routes to a mate here that are very fun and satisfying to play out, if you’re on the Black side of the board.
In the actual game, the rook on the f-file is blocked by the f3-pawn so that it cannot protect the back rank (which is what my combination was based upon), but I had neglected to take into account that the move 32…fxg4! opens up the f-file for the rook to protect the back rank. In hindsight this is devastatingly obvious. Of course a pawn capture opens a file. Of course, I was inadvertently adding a defender with tempo against my own attack. Of course, my once-again-winning game was blowing up in my face after I had lit the M80 in my hand. In the end, it all becomes obvious, because my opponent now blocks the back rank with three defenders (queen, bishop, rook), so I cannot win with three or even four attackers, since they can’t attack all at once. The attack fizzles out, and I’m down three pawns and a piece. The whole thing is entirely resignable, but as chess players often do, I continued to play on for much longer than my opponent had deserved. I was wasting his time, and my own, and I resigned when my last gasping breath of hope was shuttered.

Later in my analysis of the game, I discovered that a move I had initially dismissed was, in fact, actually winning: 31…Qf4
I won’t ruminate on the position further, since it never occurred, but this moves wins because the threat (you guessed it… Ng4!) leads to mate, so White should sacrifice the exchange with 32.Rxf6 Qxf6, when Black’s material and positional advantage is obvious and dominates the position. Chess is hard, guys. We both had opportunities to win and throw the game and, in the end, my opponent made the second-to-last mistake and I let it pass by. Press F to pay respects.
Post-Mortem
At the beginning of the day I had a tournament performance average over 1900 and an estimated rating of 1752. By the time I was walking out of the tournament hall, my rating was dropping 30 points and my score had worsened from 3/4 to 3/6. If I had taken two byes and just not played, I would have both gotten my rating goal for the year and walked away with a bit more money than I had paid to enter. But, I remember writing that this wasn’t really about the money or the rating, but the experience. Still, I had to let out a dramatic sigh as the weight of the tournament was finally off my shoulders. Now comes the hard work: Analyzing these losses, therapeutically and excessively blogging about them on the internet to possibly nobody and burning the pain of the losses into my brain in such a way that I won’t forget the hurt — even if I feel like I repeated some mistakes I had made before. Once the phases of grief are all over, I’m back to what I’m always doing: Studying master game collections, playing blitz for fun, going through Mastering Chess Strategy, studying the Ruy Lopez (a new book I’ll be putting review up hopefully soon), and looking ahead to the next chess event (a tournament that begins in a couple weeks where I can try to do a bit better).
Later, chatting with a fellow club player who has become a good chess friend and source of encouragement, my mood was lifted a bit.
Not only this, but all my games with bad results were ones against kids who all seem bound for Expert or Master or beyond. So, OK, I lost points — but to players who gained 100 or 200 points in this one tournament. It’s only natural. Also, these kids have been competing for many more years than I have. I’ve been doing tournament chess for almost two years. Some of these kids are going on eight years. Maybe I can be a bit more grateful and get more perspective rather than be sour about losing to these underrated kids.
All in all, this was a worthwhile experience, and I got more games with more mistakes under my belt, so it’s not a wash — it’s a net positive, even if I’m a few points lower rated and down the tournament entry fee. It was a privilege to compete against so many players, and my score, even at 3/6, is better than I deserve. With all that done, I now have 48 rating points to gain before reaching my goal in 2023, which is 30 more points than a few days ago — but I’m up for the challenge!