First Saturday Quads 5/3/2008
Saturday, I played in the West Chester Chess Club’s First Saturday of the Month Quads. Normally, we have around thirty-two to thirty-six players, but we only had twenty-two players this time. Maybe people were staying home so that they could watch the Kentucky Derby, which the pre-race favorite Big Brown won. But sacrificing a whole day’s worth of chess for two minutes of horse racing seems unlikely. Whatever the reason, turnout was down, and I, with my low Class A rating, played in the second quad.
For those who are unfamiliar with how quads are run, and perhaps even with chess, I’ll note that when someone plays in a USCF-sanctioned tournament (”USCF”=”United States Chess Federation”), he gets a rating—a measure of playing strength—based on his results and on the strengths of his opponents. The more rated games one plays, the more accurate his rating becomes. In quads, the four highest-rated players are grouped together, and the four highest-rated players below them are grouped together, and so on, and each player plays one game against each of the other three players in his quad. (If the number of players isn’t even, the tournament director plays, making it even; and if the number of players still isn’t a multiple of four, the bottom group is a six-person section in which each person still plays three games but in which the pairings are handled by something called the “Swiss system,” a well-established system for pairing players, round after round, in a tournament.) My rating (1815, but now probably up to about 1830) is in the top fourth or fifth of tournament players; I had the seventh-highest rating among the twenty-two players. USCF classes include Senior Master (2400+), National Master (2200-2399), Expert (2000-2199), Class A (1800-1999), Class B (1600-1799), Class C (1400-1599), Class D (1200-1399), and Class E (1000-1199); few adults are lower-rated than 1000, although many kids are. (The local chess club only has one master and one expert.)
I had a strange quad. I won my first game, when I should have lost—I got into a very inferior position straight out of the opening, struggled to come up with active play, and held on, only to reach a middlegame position in which I was sure I was lost. But my opponent didn’t make the moves I thought he’d make, and I wound up trading down into a favorable endgame, which I then won. In the second round, I played a very drawish game, only to stumble into a lost ending! <Sigh> Then, in the third round, my opponent handed me an Exchange (a rook for either knight or bishop—in this case, a knight) by letting me fork his queen and rook with my knight, and after many more moves, I forced his resignation. So, it wasn’t a bad quad, measured by results—I scored 2-1—but it wasn’t a quad in which I played the way I want to.
June 9th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Cheers, On Monday I found information on chess opening. Your post on First Saturday Quads 5/3/2008 really added to that, and I found myself nodding throughout your post!