I became an IM!

(time to read: 10 mins)

Introduction

The summer is always the time of the year when I get to play the most. Since the 10th of July, I have played 3 tournaments back to back to back, making my last IM norm in the Pontevedra Open, held in Pontevedra, Vigo, Spain, from the 24th to 30th of July. It's nice that I made the norm there as I have quite a good relationship with this tournament. I know the organizers well, get along with lots of players from the tournament, and also made my first norm there, in 2023.
Apart from Pontevedra, I played the Portuguese First League and the Leça Open, which takes place in Oporto, Portugal. There are too many games to look at, so I will just select a few to show you.

Pontevedra Open

My results from the Pontevedra Open. I finished 6th overall and gained 1k of elo (10 points).

Quite remarkable that I won the first round by default, lost against a lower rated player in round 3, and somehow managed to secure the norm before the last round meaning I could lose the last round and still make the norm (as happened).
So far, this has definitely been my best performance of the summer, and I am quite proud of some of the games. This is my favourite game by far.

An interesting realization - Playing to my style

A couple years ago I just played whatever I wanted, with very little theoretical knowledge. I had lots of fun, but often got into trouble too quickly. Since then, I started taking my repertoire too seriously. Studying openings excessively and strictly following my repertoire also wasn't the best approach. More recently, I found a better way... Basically I look at my opponent's games before the game and see what they play. If I have some fun idea against a particular opening of theirs, I'll play it, otherwise, I fall back to my main repertorie, where I have worked hard to leave very little holes behind. In a practical example, my main repertoire is 1.d4 with white and, for example, the Nimzo with black. But, life is too short to not play 1.e4 every once in a while, so I play it - a lot. I have some ideas in the Najdorf, some ideas in the French, some ideas here and there, and if I don't like the stuff he plays, or if he plays too many different things, I'll fall back to my relatively well prepared 1.d4.
This works well for me because I like playing lots of different positions and I just get bored if I only play the same stuff.

A specific opening problem

Even with the last paragraph in mind, there was a specific opening line that caused me some trouble - the four knights sicilian.

I chose to include this variation as one of my main weapons because I love how chaotic and sharp the middlegame positions are, but unfortunately, at a high level in chess (higher than mine), chaotic and sharp lines = heavy heavy memorization. That, I really don't like. Another problem with this opening line is that when people play 6.a3, I had two games that reached a Taimanov structure, and I have come to realize that I don't understand these structures well at all, often spending loads of time searching for counterplay in the middlegame. Here is a game that illustrated this point well.

All in all, I need to work on this line more.

Next tournaments and final notes

Next up, I will play two more tournaments in Portugal - the Maia Open and the Portuguese Championship, both in Oporto. I am not strong enough yet to realistically think about GM norms, but I want to just play my chess without the burden of making the norms for a change. I want to have fun, enjoy my games and hopefully gain some elo. In terms of takeaways from these tournaments, I see improvements in terms of the Openings, which I said was my biggest problem in the Grenke blog post, and where I think I struggle the most is in calculation. I believe I have a decent feel for where to place the pieces and how to play endgames and so on, but it often happens that I just miss he could do this, or rely on some line that is flawed... This is something that obviously takes time to improve upon. Something that I also want to do is having a coach again (haven't had one in 5 years!).

Hope you enjoyed this rant about my chess tournaments and hopefully you found something interesting. See you soon with more rants! :)