So I got invited to a scholastic invitational and I wasn't really expecting to win the whole thing and go to Barber (Andrew Jiang live in Georgia so go figure), but I did hope to have a fun and exciting day.
Round 1
My first game was against the 44th highest rated 11-year-old in the country, Eric Wang. Eric was a chill dude and he respectfully beat my... well um... butt. I missed several tactics and we both had a pretty crazy game. Little did I know that this would be nothing compared to the other rounds. Here is one of the tactics we both missed.
https://lichess.org/study/bFXSBYNO/Nxg14smX
Obviously, Rc1 would be much better. It's still not dead equal, but I would start to be stabilizing.
Round 2
For my second round, I got paired against Aditya Bang (1688), we both played the regular old boring drawish Sicilian line and made a quick draw in 26 moves. It was really dry and after a couple moves, I made a three-fold.
Round 3
My third-round opponent was Ruthvik Kasala, and boy oh boy was this a rollercoaster. There were some ups and many downs. I was dead lost and then came back and made a draw. The following position shows just how lost I was:
https://lichess.org/study/bFXSBYNO/eqvyFyke
And then, he did this:
https://lichess.org/study/bFXSBYNO/R0laJsol#81
I immediately played Ke2 and then it was just a draw.
Round 4
The last round was a complete disastermasterpiece. I made so many blunders but so many good moves. I played against David Katz (1628). At first, I completely messed up my preparation and he did not capitalize on it:
https://lichess.org/study/bFXSBYNO/CXcxhCQY#22
Then, I hung my rook:
https://lichess.org/study/bFXSBYNO/lbJ1gPWJ#29
Then my queen:
https://lichess.org/study/bFXSBYNO/zSBWMXSP#39
But then a miracle happened:
https://lichess.org/study/bFXSBYNO/jJb05IAW#48
We kept playing until eventually I gave him a good old checkmate:
