My first classical tournament (Recap)
Hey! I wanted to make a little recap for my first OTB-Classical tournament so people who haven't played OTB yet get a little insight from a newcomer :). I thought it would be nice to see which mistakes I made as well!
I played in my city's championship 7 rounds 90/40+30. It started on thursday evening and ended on sunday afternoon/evening. I had some hopes having a ~2000 rapid chess.com and ~1950 classical rating on lichess. My goal was to have around 3.5/7 points as I knew most of the players are around 1500-1900.
Round 1 made me see a gambit that I didn't know. I should have accepted it, but declined. I had around 50 min left when I missed a drawing sacrifice. Should have spent more time here!
Round 3 featured my biggest mistake when I offered a draw in a winning position. I just thought it would be nice to draw this opponent who had a good rating. I can not recommend doing this lol.
R4 was a devastating fall for a trap in the opening that made me basically lose instantly. In round 6 my opponent played basically perfectly and demolished me in 24 moves or so. That's part of the progress I guess.
Round 5 and 7 were probably my best in terms of openings and play. In R5 I faced the son of R3 opponent and I knew which opening he'd play so I was in prep for like 8 moves. We played for over 3 1/2 hours and I was so cooked the next day. I won R5 and 7 (and additionally R2) after making a comeback and an easy sacrifice in R7 (cleared the bishop who defended his knight with my rook and then took the knight with the queen). Chessbase also helped a lot to predict the openings!
I ended up scoring 3.5/7 and will get an initial dwz of 1633 and 1702 elo. A great experience and I think nobody should miss out on playing OTB.
Overall, I think OTB is a lot more fun than online for me and it's nice to disconnect from the world for a bit. Thanks to reddit I also got some advices that did help me!
If someone is interested in a study link or has questions, just ask :). I think there are some nice takes from my games who show that OTB doesn't mean you play automatically better.
Key-Points from my side: stay hydrated - it really helped and usually I don't drink that much. Don't rush the opening, it's ok to lose a bit of time here. Don't offer a draw early. Looking up opponent's chess accounts helps even at that level.