State Tournament (1)--Disappointing Finish

I drove down to Peoria yesterday to watch the second day of the IHSA State Chess Tournament. Prospect finished 4-3, beating Romeoville, York, Glenbard West, and Richards, while losing a close match to Nequa Valley and getting shellacked by Evanston and Hinsdale Central. It is not a terrible result, but after going 8-2 in the regular season, I thought we might have been able to join Barrington and Palatine at 5-2 . Rolling Meadows, Fremd, and Hoffman Estates also finished 4-3. Buffalo Grove, Conant, and Schaumburg finished 3-4. Elk Grove went 2-5.

The individual board results were slightly disappointing as well. After impressive results in both the regular season and MSL tournament, I had hoped that either Tejas Shah or Parth Patel might break through for a board prize. Neither was able to do so, although Tejas did save the team from getting blanked by Evanston. The MSL did alright though with Zach Kasiurak 6-1 on 1st Board, Rishi Sethi 7-0 on 2nd, Ani Katre 6.5-.5 on 3rd, Mike Yang 6.5-.5 on 6th, and Chuck Novak 6.5-.5.

I hope to take a good look at Prospect's games over the next couple months to get a clearer picture of their strengths and weaknesses, although I already have a few ideas:

(1) Prospect players need to develop more determination when playing bad positions. It seems that after a blunder, they resign themselves to a loss and go down without spending much time on their moves. In the 6th round loss to Nequa Valley, it seemed like the four games we lost were over in fifteen to thirty minutes while the Nequa Valley players made us fight for an hour and a half for the points we got. There are certainly times when the loss of a piece causes a player's position to collapse completely, however, there are just as many times when the position contains defensive resources if the player work to find them.

(2) The players definitely need work on their endgame skills. Part of their lack of gumption in bad positions may simply be the fact that they are not familiar with the kinds of places that draws can be found, so they have trouble coming up with any plan when they are behind.

(3) Some of the players have just enough opening knowledge to get themselves in trouble. There were several games where someone thought they knew the opening that was being played when in fact it was a different variation that presented different problems. Rather than working to figure out those problems, they played the moves they thought they knew and wound up in trouble.

There were certainly some encouraging signs and it was a good season overall. If the players are willing to put in some effort and I can figure out how to communicate things to them, I think next year can be even better.