Warming up for the season

Last saturday, I played my first chess tournament of the year. I hadn´t really practised that much during Christmas and I wanted to see where my level  actually was.

It was held on Chamartin´s train station and is celebrated once every year.. This tournamnet is well renowned among the chess community and strong players tend to participate as there are some juicy rewards. This was the third time I attended the tournament. I hadn´t won any considerable prize before, but this year I had the feeling it was going to be different.

The tournament consisted of seven rounds at a rapid pace, this meant we had only ten minutes on the clock. The first three rounds were relatively easy. I faced younger opponents that played great chess. On the other hand, they lacked a little bit of experience playing this kind of tournaments and that gave me the edge.

However, everything changed in the fourth round as I was matched up against, arguably, the best player in the tournament. In addition, we had to play in the first table where all the attention was mainly focused. I was a little bit nervous as this was, probably, the most important match of the tournament for me. The game stayed quite calmly among the opening. But in the middle game, I missed a tactic and he obtained one pawn of advantage. At this level, that was all my opponent needed in order to carry the game defeat me.

In spite of this loss, I didn´t give up. I continued playing at my highest level and ended up winning the other three matches, some of them against really strong opponents. 

After seven rounds, I obtained six out of seven points and finished sixth overall in the tournament. This was the best result I had ever had in this tournament. I also won fifty euros in prizes, the icing of the cake for a great performance.

I left the tournament with great sensations. Not only I stayed at the top positions during the whole tournament , but I aslo defeated some players I hadn ´t ever beaten before. In the end, I felt really satisfied with my performance in the tournament which has given me a great boost of confidence that will definately help me to start the season in the best possible way