Still moving up.

On April 28th, I managed to up my rating to 2026 by going 4-0 to win the Joliet Junior College April Open. I was a bit nervous as I arrived as I had not worked on my game much over the past couple of months. My nervousness increased when I saw high school phenoms Zach Kasiurak and Dan McNally hanging around. Luckily, it turned out that they were there to beat up on each other in the Denker Qualifier.

The Open tournament drew thirty-seven players including two masters, but both of them lost before I had to face them. As a result, I was paired down in every round, making it hard to improve my rating too much, but I managed to put a little breathing room between myself and Class A. Joliet also marked the eighth tournament in a row in which I managed to improve my rating. At the age of fifty, I think I am supposed to be going downhill.

I kind of got the feeling that some of my opponents might have been unduly impressed with my expert rating. My Class C opponent in the first round only waited three moves as White before getting out of book with 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Bg5!? (he obviously did not know how poor my record is with the Queen's Indian and the Nimzo-Indian).

The most recent experimenter with this move is an IM from Bangladesh whose record with it is +1, -5, =3. My opponent enjoyed no more success. In an effort to simplify quickly, he dropped a pawn while trading queens and never got much play.

In round two, I had White agains a 1757 rated eighth grader who played with the aggressiveness one expects from that species. After developing fairly reasonably in a Tarrasch-like position, my opponent decided to go on the offensive with the optimistic 11...h5!?


Unfortunately, with his king still in a fairly wide open center, he never got to generate an attack and he flagged on move 28.

My third opponent sported a 1697 rating and did not play badly, but he never really tried to put much pressure on me with the white pieces. There was certainly no reason for him to be intimidated by my rating as he had beaten one of the masters in the second round. On the other hand, perhaps he had won that game by playing defensively until the master overreached. In our game, a passive pawn move, 15.a3, came back to haunt him in the ending.

Although down a pawn, my opponent could have made my life difficult if he could have created an outside passed pawn on the queen-side. Unfortunately, it was my move and I fixed his pawns with 47...a4! and I was able to win easily with my extra pawns on the other wing.

My final opponent had an 1887 rating and had eliminated the other master in the third round, but he played very passively against my English Opening. Back when I played 1.e4, I spent several years climbing above and slipping below 1800. I finally left Class B behing for good when I switched to 1.c4. A large part of my current rating has come against players who do not specifically prepare for the English and so wind up in passive positions without a good plan. At Joliet, my opponent went with. 1.c4 e5 2.g3 Nf6 3.Bg2 Be7 4.Nf3 Nc6 5.Nc3 0-0 6.0-0 h6?!

At this point, I was pretty sure that my opponent had no active ideas of his own. So I concentrated on securing space control and squeezing him into further passivity, and I wound up winning fairly easily.

My next planned outing will be at the Chicago Open where I am sure that I will have no easy games.