How I won the nichest chess tournament at UofT

Roughly a month ago, I was walking around the University College building at U of T. I was trying to find the newly opened student ran cafe "Diabolos". Instead, I found a sign posted on a bulletin board advertising the Chem Club chess championship. There's a ten dollar entrance fee and a prize pot for winning. You don't have to be in Chemistry to participate. Being a chess enthusiast myself, I quickly signed up.

Now if you're reading this blog without prior knowledge of my chess skills, I'm actually pretty decent at chess. I'm rated above 2000 on chess.com blitz, use to compete a lot growing up and was even at some point the youth chess champion of my country. All this to say, I was going to try hard and win this cash prize. I thought that since this chess tournament isn't hosted by the chess club, I had a pretty good chance of winning. Most likely, none of the really cracked chess players at U of T know about the Chem Club Chess tournament.

Shortly after I've signed up, I received an email detailing the date and plan of the event. I marked it on my calendar and showed up to the venue on the day of and was told that there are around 30 people that signed up.

As time went by, however, it became clear that not everyone that signed up to the tournament remembered to come. There ended up being around 10 people that showed up and we played a swiss style tournament to find the winner.

I'm about to talk about the games that I played, but if you're interested, I've put these games (and my analysis of said games) in this lichess study.

In the first round, I played this guy that claims that he used to play a lot in high school. I very quickly became apparent that this guy has a good grasp on the chess foundations but was pretty rusty as he fell for a simple tactic. I was able to take the win pretty easily.

On the second round, I played this guy who claims that he is a national master. I immediately knew that this match was not gonna be easy. I opened with the French defense, an opening that I've been studying lately. He played the classical variation and I hit him with a surprise gambit line which he did not accept. I was trying little tricks on my opponent the entire game but he was cautious and didn't fall for anything. Eventually, as we were playing on a rapid time control with no increment, clock time became a problem for both of us as we were low on time. I knew that since there wasn't a lot of players, I had to win this game for a chance to win first in the tournament. Luckily, I've built up a small time advantage and a tricky position for my opponent to deal with. We went into a time scramble where I barely manage to come out on top.

The third and final game was against this girl who played the London System. By this point, I knew that if I win this game I would've won the tournament and the cash prize. Her opening was solid but it seems like she didn't really knew what to do in the middle game. I manage to play good moves, get a winning position, and ultimately won on time.

With this win, I officially won the Chem Club chess championship and cement myself as the first ever Chem Club chess champion. And I won my forty dollar cash prize :)

Once again, the actual chess games with analysis is up on this lichess study