I've known for a long time that Michael Auger and William Aramil are infinitely better blitz players than I am. But I really got a kick out of losing to the third-place finisher, George Li.
It's one thing to lose a game by overlooking NxK or to draw a game because one fails to look at the clock when one's position is overwhelming and one's opponent flagged several seconds earlier, which happened in my games with other honorable opponents. It's another to get squashed like a bug in a theoretical line, which is what George did to me. I forgot the event was USCF blitz-rated, and shouted in horror, "My position is wretched!" or something like that.
"SHHH!!"
(Only slightly more quietly): "But it is wretched."
After the game, I peppered George with move-order questions in his deadly 4.e3 Slav, and he was kind enough to answer them. George is 12 years old.
Crosstable here. The three prizewinners received enormous chocolate bars: Isaac would have approved
Before the event, organizer Maret Thorpe was honored by Mike Cardinale of the Illinois Chess Association for her past & current contributions to ICA. Thank you, Maret!
It's one thing to lose a game by overlooking NxK or to draw a game because one fails to look at the clock when one's position is overwhelming and one's opponent flagged several seconds earlier, which happened in my games with other honorable opponents. It's another to get squashed like a bug in a theoretical line, which is what George did to me. I forgot the event was USCF blitz-rated, and shouted in horror, "My position is wretched!" or something like that.
"SHHH!!"
(Only slightly more quietly): "But it is wretched."
After the game, I peppered George with move-order questions in his deadly 4.e3 Slav, and he was kind enough to answer them. George is 12 years old.
Crosstable here. The three prizewinners received enormous chocolate bars: Isaac would have approved
Before the event, organizer Maret Thorpe was honored by Mike Cardinale of the Illinois Chess Association for her past & current contributions to ICA. Thank you, Maret!
No comments:
Post a Comment