Road to NM -- Week 10: Winning another Tournament

Intro

Welcome back for week 10 on the Road to NM series where I account my progress on the road towards the NM title (hopefully) by the end of the 2027-2028 school year (May 2028). In this blog I analyze my tournament games from the week if I had any and outline my thought process so all can see what I'm thinking in each game and giving all of you guys the chance to walk along side me on my route to the NM title. Feel free to say any comments you have about either my games, study plans, or just general advice or thoughts about the blog in general. Also, if you've been keeping up with the series you probably have seen that there is a different famous chess player as the cover each week either from history or current. If you want to help decide the person on the cover, comment the player you would like to be the cover photo (it must be someone who hasn't been featured yet) and the most commented player/comment of a suggested player that is most liked in the forum (ex. if someone posts Magnus Carlsen and it gets 6 likes but 3 people post Pragg, Magnus would be featured *if he hadn't been the cover yet*) Also, likes do not add up over multiple comments to keep from people stacking on comments with each other to win the featured player each week. So anyways, let's get into all the stuff that happened this week.

OTB Play

Like in week 7, I was yet again the top seed in the tournament, though this time instead of by 20ish rating, it was by over 250 points. Needless to say to have any chance of gaining (and not losing rating) I would have to be perfect through the 5 round tournament, in which there were 3 or 4 players that were still pretty strong, and 3 that are likely significantly underrated (my rounds 1, 2, and 4 opponents) so I had to be careful.

Round 1

This opponent is the most clearly underrated, having not played in classical tournaments which suits her playstyle better and having a nearly 300 point higher rapid rating than her 1100 classical rating, I knew i'd have to be on the lookout. I've played this opponent many times (this was the 8th or 9th) so you would expect I would know what she played by now but that's wrong because it was only my 2nd time with white out of all of those times and my first one since switching away from playing the english. I played poorly in the opening against her french (which I tend to do a lot) but due to her passive playstyle I managed to fight back and get the win with her in serious time pressure and facing a large attack.

Round 2

This game was against an opponent i've faced a few times, and the last tournament they had a massive performance, only playing 3 rounds and going 2.5/3 in those rounds only drawing to the 1700 that I ended up beating in that tournament, so needless to say I made sure to be wary of him. Fortunately, despite another poor opening position I outplayed my opponent and got the win.

Round 3

This was supposed to be the big showdown of the tournament because we were the top 2 seeds and this opponent finished 4/5 only losing to me, but while this was the most interesting game of the tournament, I played well and got the win.

Round 4

This was my last big test of the tournament, because this player is newer, but talent runs in the family as his 13 year old sister is a WFM so I needed to be careful. I found a line against his bowlder attack that I liked when prepping against it and got a winning position quickly and won the game.

Round 5

I got paired against an 800 this round and decided to have some fun. I played the bird, and got a crushing attack very quickly but I wanted to get castling checkmate so I drew out the game a little bit to reach that.

Overall, it was an okay showing, I learned a lot about my opening struggles, and I took care of business as I needed too even if it was against a weaker field. I gained 19 rating total, getting me to 1554, so it was a solid gain even if it was small. Slow but steady progress is good. Next week i'll recap a quads tournament which was significantly more entertaining than this tournament so make sure to check that out when it comes out.

Study

I've been prioritizing physical shape a lot lately especially since my soccer season starts soon and i'll be focusing a large amount of time on that too, however I have made it still a massive priority to analyze every game that I play OTB deeply and since my mistakes I learned this week are often opening based, I have done some opening study to understand my openings better in addition to my typical game analysis and tactical training. I've also been doing some more positional study from "How to Reassess your Chess" by Jeremy Silman, and I can already feel it helping out my positional game so I think overall i'm getting stronger already which is good.

Outro

Thanks so much for tuning into the Road to NM series, if you enjoyed it please give it a like so more people can see it and if you don't want to miss out on new additions to the series be sure to follow me so you get updated when a new one is released (I'm not follow farming, it has no benefit for me and I can't even see my total follower count)

Next week as I said earlier i'll be recapping my recent quads tournament (sorry for releasing this week a little late) and I'll see you then. Thanks again for all of your support, bye!