GRENKE Open 2017

A very impressive - and German biggest - Chess Tournament has seen mixed results of ChessMonk:

Very similar to my last tournament in early January, I managed to dominate the game in 6 out of 9 matches but failed to cash-in the full point way too often: Against two weaker players and even two FMs I only managed a draw in CLEARY won positions. This is simply not good enough to increase my rating!

In two matches - one against a 2200-dude and one against a 2150 guy, I was simply performing badly. In the first case based on insufficient opening knowledge: a gap I already closed the very same evening! And in round 9 I oversaw two very very simple threads in an otherwise very pleasant position. My position was good enough to absorb the loss of the first pawn (again showing that in generall I can easily keep up with these guys), but losing the second pawn in the very same silly manner was too much...

So just like my personal summary of the Staufer Open, I - reinforcingly - conclude:

1. I am very very close to reach 50% against "weaker" FMs but I really have to stop allowing them to escape with half a point - I have to stop to "chicken out"!
2. I manage to control the board and the direction of the game pretty well and pretty constantly against weaker players, but then fail miserable at a certain point. Up to now, I cannot recognise any pattern why I start to make bad moves all of a sudden once I reach cleary won positions! (However, one alerting pattern is shining through: I am weak at spotting tactics against me. And once they hit me like lightning, I am not really able to calculate the consequences well! I tend to - heavily - overestimate their brutal force and falsly start incorrect defensive measures.)
3. No real time trouble occured. (Yes, there was one game, but time trouble only started with the last 10 moves due to heavy tactics against me being involved.) It seems like I established reliable positional understanding of where my pieces should move to, without having to overly invest time.

Although openings weren´t really the issue, one of my pillars of the coming weeks will be to intensify the usage of CPT in order to gain more confidence getting out of the opening - even against titled players - both without disadvantages on the board and on the clock!

The second pillar will be positional/tactical puzzles!

BTW: My son did remarkably well - making any of my own blunders somewhat less important... Lukily, he get´s closer to my own performance and since he is playing some of my openings, too, I am eager to see us starting to work together trying to improve our chess...