A Rich Experience: Round 5 (second half) of the QCD Adults Chess League

Warning:
This is gonna be a really long post. I hope I am doing the QCD league justice!

So after a 2-month break, the QCD Adults Chess League continues with the 5th round. Just a quick summary of how things work:

• A team can have up to 8 players at any time;
• All games are unrated (so players inactive for a long time can use this as an opportunity to derust at no cost of rating points);
• Teams of 4 players will play against other teams in a 10-round swiss.
• The 1st 4 rounds (first half) was held at Cairnhill CC, while the remaining 6 rounds were held at tonight's location, the Rooftop level of AQueen Hotel @ Paya Lebar
• Before the start of the 2nd half, teams are allowed to have up to 2 of their players replaced by new players, on the condition that these new players must not have been part of any of the other teams (it does not matter if the player has played any games or not)

Just take a look at the pictures of the playing venue yourself. What have adult chess players in Singapore not in the league been missing out? 😂

A look at rooftop outside the playing hall.

A look at the playing hall -- I am actually glad we are playing inside and not outside because I have an extreme phobia of heights -- I actually feel scared when I walked out to search for my friends, LOL.

Free-flow of coffee and tea provided to us at no charge. Extremely great news to me as a tea person. I only wish everyone co-operated 100% and did not leave their used cups and water bottles lying around for others to clean up after their games. Oh well, I feel Singaporeans including myself have much to learn from the Japanese people! Don't mind my non chess-related digression, this is just a personal opinion.

Another picture of how it looks outside. No more, since I can't afford to be too scared before playing. Nah, the pictures were not taken by myself ^o^

Before going into my badly played game, let's give some contextualisation and spice things up a bit:

1. This is the 2nd season my team, 8.c4! (choose 4 players to be playing out of the team of 8, like the mathematical nCr and the factorial '!' sign resembles the "good move" sign in chess, hence our name) is playing in. Believe it or not, we have not scored a single team victory since the first season. Of course, we are "hungry" for our maiden team win.

2. Personally, I have drew all 3 of my earlier games (our team took a bye in round 3) in the current 2018 season. This is already a huge improvement over my performance last year (+1 =1 -5, or overall -4 lol). Hence, it remains to be seen if the streak will continue.

3. My closer chess friends (i.e. mainly the regulars from the Singapore Chess Meetup) would know that I have taken painful decision to cut down my frequency of visit from weekly to monthly, so as to "gain" some time for chess self-study. I am so happy to see so many of my friends again! 

4. Other than my personal game (last priority), I am also happy to see so many interesting games by other players. There were a couple of interesting games that really left me a DEEP impression, including:

• A game whereby a player was playing so fast, his clock went to 42 minutes or so. And it was already in the endgame! Usually, we often run into time and energy trouble towards the endgame, and the format of our play was 30 minutes + 30 seconds increment LOL
  
  With no intended offence, we would usually only see this in beginners / kids games (whereby they don't appreciate taking time to think through and just play the first move that comes to mind like playing blitz).
  
  But in this particular situation, it was arguably the correct thing to do because it was a Rook + pawns ending whereby the superior side was dangerously low on time. So the reason the inferior side played so fast was to deny the opponent of enough thinking time to work things out. Also, because the side with the inferior position was so bad, he didn't have that many legal/logical moves to think of!
  
• A game whereby 2 players got engaged in a long grinding game -- the game probably lasted more than 30 minutes after the 2nd last game concluded. And I think a lot of the players,  including myself, with our games concluded earlier, owe these 2 warriors an apology for making too much noise and causing distractions. Please pardon us as we were simply too passionate for the game!

Okay, finally it comes to my badly played game. It was badly played in that I got into a very bad, if not completely lost position out of the opening phase of the game AGAIN. My typical game goes like this: Get into a worse position out of the opening, *try* to survive. If somehow I manage to get away with it, I will try to crawl back slowly. And this one fits in. I really need to break out of this cycle for my own good!

Of course, it was not all bad -- after the game, I gave my candid views that I thought my opponent had me, and as a parting "gift", told him about the Singapore Chess Meetup, writing down the location and nearest MRT station 😇

Every Wednesday, 6:30pm, Downtown Station, Downtown ("Blue") Line -- the lowest turnout would be easily 20, with many adult players of all playing strength, from complete beginners to titled players). Also, I have made some improvements to my mental fitness. I am no longer scared of mutual time trouble. 

A more in-depth (move-by-move) look into my personal game can be found below.

Learning Points / Personal Thoughts Overall

1. My glaring problems persist: Queen placement (developing the major piece too early) and pawn break (preventions).
   
2. The good: my sense of "I'm (getting) in(to) trouble" is decent -- it helps me find good defensive resources now and then to fight for equality from a worse position
   The bad: more often than not, I'm giving away chances to get advantage too.
   
3. The good: I'm no longer scared in mutual time trouble. After all, it is natural to be scared in time trouble, but are human players and the opponent would be equally scared too!  So it's not objective to feel scared -- fear doesn't help your case anyway.
   
   The bad: My time management in today's game was ridiculous. To have < 5 minutes when I have not even castled my King to safety is totally unacceptable.
   
4. It is good etiquette (at least to me) to make visual cues when offering a draw, just to make sure that the opponent notices your offer (in case it was not heard). I actually got inspired while looking at how other players offer a draw in their games, thinking through in my head and agreeing to the advantages of making a draw offer this way. But not to extend your hand for handshake in case the opponent sees it as an "emotional blackmail" to accept the offer.

As always, please feel free to share any feedback for sharing and mutual learning. Once again, thank you for your time and attention.

Yours sincerely

Ong Yujing

aka newbie_learner, scorekeeper