2024 Sacramento Chess Championship Recap

Winning some, losing some. But mostly feeling good.

After July 4th came the annual Sacramento Chess Championship, and I was eager to try to play my best chess. I had taken a long-awaited vacation and this was the capstone event. For the two weeks prior, I was working hard on trying to get my chess tactics habits back into some sort of recognizable shape. Work projects the past six months have left me a bit drained and unprepared for chess. My main diet consisted The Checkmate Patterns Manual, 1001 Chess Exercises for Club Players, and Chess Tactics From Scratch. I also studied a bit of Alekhine, but stayed away from obsessing over the openings, secure in the knowledge that I already know too much chess opening theory.

Of note for this edition of the Sacramento Chess Championship was the turnout. 4 sections, and 133 players, and, if FIDE Arbiter John McCumiskey is to be believed, this is the largest non-scholastic tournament in this area, ever. Top of the roster was IM John Donaldson in the Seniors section, and he went a cool 6/6 to take home the top prize.

In contrast to last year’s tournament, where I was close to my rating peak, my rating is the lowest it’s been — I’ve dropped a full class and gone under 1600 after a dismal tournament a few weeks prior. I won’t be recapping those games, thank you very much! But I got some perspective and time heals [some] wounds over the board, so I felt very prepared coming into the tournament halls on Friday. I won’t give a play-by-play of each game, but I did want to focus on some key moments in most of them.

I scored 3/6, with a win and a loss per day — two wins with White and one with Black. The two losses I had with Black were games that I could most certainly have won, so those are very interesting to me and show where I need to make changes in my thinking process. The game I lost with White was a matter of unfamiliarity with the plans in the particular structure that arose — this one will sit in my head for quite a while. Let’s dig into these losses first!

Game 1: King’s Gambit Accepted, Schallop Defense

Despite practicing and studying the Sicilian Defense, I stuck with 1…e5 this tournament since a good five out of my six opponents were all juniors of whom I have at least twice the years. Getting into a combative opening with tactical mayhem isn’t usually my jam, so, if possible, I’d rather avoid complications in less familiar situations. Of course, this doesn’t matter when my opponent goes for the King’s Gambit and sharpens the game from move 2!

1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.d4 d5 5.e5 Nh5 6.Be2 Bg4 7.O-O c5 8.Ne1 Bxe2 9.Qxe2 g6 10.Bxf4 Nxf4 11.Rxf4 Bg7 12.Rf2 O-O 13.c3 Nc6 14.Nf3 Re8 15.d4

Somehow, this King’s Gambit has morphed into a very good French for Black. I was thinking to myself and pondering this, but because I don’t play the French very much at all, and perhaps because of the fianchetto bishop, I didn’t realize the power of the breaking move 15…f6! here. Instead, I went for a plan to try to put pressure on the d4 pawn, but this allowed my opponent to equalize quickly with 15…cxd4 16.cxd4 Qb6? and my advantage dissipated immediately, while White’s active position really started to shine, leading to my loss.

The main takeaway from this miss here was that I absolutely need to be aware of the pawn breaks I have. 15…f6, or even 15…cxd4 16.cxd4 f6!, is an obvious gem here. Any French player would see this right away. In other words, for all my chess knowledge, I identified the structure, but I forgot the plan!

OK, let’s look at Game 3, which I also lost:

Game 3: Spielmann-Indian Defense

A bit of google-fu and I was able to find what was probably my opponent’s account online. A cursory look at one of his online accounts using openingtree.com told me that I had nothing to worry about, and that I could play my normal repertoire with no surprises likely. Here I had the Black pieces again.

1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 c5 3.Nc3 cxd4 4.Nxd4 d5 5.Bf4 Nbd7 6.Ndb5??

Believe it or not, this position is almost -3 in Black’s favor already.

6…e5! 7.Bg5 a6 8.Na3 Bb4 9.Bd2 O-O 10.g3 b5 11.Bg2 Bb7 12.O-O

Black’s positional advantage is obvious:

• Strong pawn center

• Queenside space

• Tactical threats of b5-b4

• Strategic threats of Bxa3! followed by Nb6-c4 with a strong outpost

• Active pieces

• Safe king

Moves I considered here were Bc5 and Bxa3, but I didn’t feel like moving the bishop again. The point is to threaten b4 with a fork on the two 3rd-rank knights, a la Sveshnikov/Kalashnikov lines. Feeling particularly secure about this position, I thought my opponent was liable to playing the move Bg5, and I wanted to prevent it and pass the move back to him so he could figure something else out instead. Therefore I played 12…h6?? and walked away from the board to stretch my legs for a couple minutes feeling all proud of myself.

Imagine my surprise when I came back to 13.Nxd5!

After this pawn grab by White, Black’s positional advantage is still good enough to maintain equality despite being down a pawn. Play continued on a for a while and I got a chance to get another advantage, but fumbled it again:

13…Bxd5 14.Bxb4 Bxh2 15.Kxg2 Re8 16.Qd3 Qb6 17.Rad1 Rad8 18.Qd6? Qb7+! 19.Kg1 Nb6 20.Qc5?

With my queen on the fianchetto menacing the g2-square, Black’s position is once again dominant. White has done little to free their game and desperately needs space to maneuver the minors to better locations. Here I had looked at Nbd5, but not seeing a clear continuation I chose something that came with a “tempo”: 20…Rc8?!. However, playing Nbd5 is better since Rc8 can come any time to kick the queen, so I may as well reserve it for when my opponent had less options for good squares to put it.

Despite this I had some plans that still looked OK after 21.Qe3 Nbd5 22.Qb3. This is a position I pondered for a long time, and in the end, it was a case of “long think, wrong think”. I swapped the knight for the bishop thinking that if I played 22…e4 (which I thought I was preparing), 23.Bd2 would have stopped the main idea. Well, it would have — but I’d still have a better position.

Later in this game I would be given one last chance to draw by repetition but would miss it and go for an attack. I had also rejected a draw offer because I wanted to see how the game would go. Though this meant I lost a half-point over what I could have scored in the tournament, I think my mindset was healthy — I was there to play chess, and I’d rather lose and learn than draw and never find out.

The main takeaways from this game:

• Do not underestimate the opponent’s tactical resources! Had I see that my bishops were both hanging after Nxd5, I would’ve played Bxa3 just to save myself the headache!

• Sometimes your main threat is prevented— that doesn’t mean the move is bad - it may still be the best move.

• Don’t trade off your opponent’s useless pieces.

Last loss…

Game 6: Dutch Defense, Leningrad Variation, Warsaw Variation

This was quite a game for me and I realized very quickly I was in over my head in this structure. I feel like I never really understood the plan or got any chances in this game. My opponent, another youngster, played awesome — I was just the chump in the way.

1.c4 f5 2.g3 g6 3.Bg2 (note to self: 3.b4 Bg7 4.Bb2 if you don’t want to transpose to the Dutch proper from the English) 3…Bg7 Nf3 4.Nf6 5.O-O O-O 6.Nc3 d6 7.d4 c6

This position has been reached thousands of times in master games but I was very unfamiliar with the Leningrad Dutch setup (the f5+g6+Bg7 idea). The influence over the e4-square and the long dark square diagonal were completely underestimated by me in this game.

8.b3 is what I played and it’s the second-most common move in master play, but I want to share some advice I got from IM Andras Toth when I posted this game on Twitter/X:

This idea makes a lot of sense and seems very straightforward. If I reach this position again, I’ll be keeping d4-d5 in mind for sure. The most common line here is 8.d5 e5 9.dxe6 Bxe6 10.b3. I prefer this slightly imbalanced structure and it’s much more comfortable without the threat of e7-e5-e4 at every moment:

Andras’s advice about Ba3 and queen swapping also makes a lot of sense after the game moves 8…e5 9.dxe5 dxe5. Instead, I tried to keep queens on with 10.Qc2? and immediately got slapped with 10…e4!

From here on I never recovered. Long story short I sacrificed a piece for three pawns, and then the exchange, and then died a slow and horrible Leningrady-Dutchy death, and my opponent ended up being one of the prize winners of the tournament along with my round 1 opponent. The main takeaway here is I should study the Dutch Defense Leningrad variations a bit, and in the meantime after c6 push d4-d5 so that in the case of e7-e5 you have exd6 and they can’t push e4 and ruin your day.

Kids are tough to beat. But I did manage to beat two of them this time around (last time I drew one kid and lost to two of them; this time I have a couple wins to go along with the losses).

Speaking of wins…

I have one game that is very close to my heart from this tournament, and I don’t want to spoil anything if you don’t already follow me on twitter! First, let’s get to the position in question. I’ve got the White pieces here.

Game 2: Anglo-Indian Defense

1.c4 Nf6 2.g3 e6 3.Bg2 Be7 4.Nf3 O-O 5.O-O Nc6 6.b3 b6 7.Bb2 Bb7 8.Nc3 d5 9.cxd5 Nxd5 10.Nxd5 exd5 11.Rc1 Bf6 12.Bxf6 Qxf6 13.Qc2 Rfe8 14.Rfe1 Re7 15.a3 Rae8 16.e3 Qd6 17.b4 d4 18.Nh4 dxe3

I was goaded into playing an inferior move, not realizing that my original idea was correct. Instead I should have played Ng5! which was my first idea, but I couldn’t find the follow up after Black pushed d3. So instead, I played Nh4 and this allowed dxe3! This move was clever, but I hadn’t realized why, quite yet. I responded with 19.Rxe3, though 19.dxe3 was slightly preferable. My opponent sprung into action: 19…Nd4!

Suddenly I realized why my opponent had played his previous pawn capture — which was to allow the knight access to d4.

White to play. According to my scoresheet, I spent 15 minutes on this move. The truth is I found it early. But the variations were intense and took me a while to calculate. Can you spot it? Give yourself a little time before moving on.

As I stated earlier, I’ve been doing a lot of tactics training in the past two weeks and I felt the sharpest I had been in a long while during this entire tournament. I think most of the credit can be given to Chess Tactics from Scratch which has refocused my ability to look at the possibilities. With that in mind, here’s the spoiler:

20.Qxc7!!

White offers a queen, but she’s not free.

• Accepting the queen with 20…Rxc7 comes at the cost of heavy material losses after 21.Rxe8+! Qf8 22.Rxf8+ Kxf8 23.Rxc7

• 20…Qxc7 is better than Rxc7, but leads to positions where White is up a passed pawn. One example is 21.Rxc7 Rx3 22.fxe3 Bxg2 23.Kxg2 Nb5 24.Rb7 Nxa3 25.Rxa7.

• Other options lose the bishop on b7, or sacrifice the queen and possibly the bishop for a rook or two.

My opponent then spent 13 minutes pondering his response.

20…Rxe3!!

He now offers his queen instead! White cannot take, as it results in a particularly aesthetic mate for Black: 21.Qxd6?? Re1+! 22.Rxe1 Rxe1 23.Bf1 22.Ne2#:

What followed were a number of precise moves by both players:

21.dxe3! Ne2+! 22.Kh1! (22.Kf1?! Qd3 and Black’s slightly better, threatening discoveries against the king, though the bishop on b7 is hanging).

22…Bxg2+! 23.Nxg2! (23…Kxg2? Qd5+!) 23…Qf6

The dust has settled, and Black is about to free their knight. I gave Black a chance to err: 24.Qc6!? and my opponent took it with 24…Qd8?? terminally removing the e2-knight’s lifeline square on c3. Instead, 24…Rd8! 25.Qxf6 gxf6 would have led to drawish endgame. I won the game shortly after by picking up the trapped knight and coordinating mating threats with the rook and queen.

Games 4 and 5 were also wins, but they weren’t nearly as special as this one with the mutual queen sacrifices, so I’ll leave you without them for now.

At the end of the tournament, I scored 3/6, and that’s as good as I did last year. But given that I had felt quite a bit of tilt prior to my two-week vacation, this entire tournament felt like a huge success for me — I improved on basically every metric in this tournament, and also came away with many takeaways on how to continue working on my game and filling in some gaps in my thinking process. Overall, it was a very successful event, and it only cost me three rating points to lose against these kids — takes the sting off quite a bit compared to 2023’s edition! I feel like my mental state is through the roof with this tournament and I’m really re-ignited with passion and love for the game.

To top it off, I walked away with a gift to myself in the form of a signed copy of IM John Donaldson’s book Bobby Fischer and His World. I’ve already started digging in and can tell that it was written with special attention and care. This may well be my first leisure read (but of course I will play through all the games and their analysis and annotations as well).

All in all, it was a nice weekend to stay in an air-conditioned room and play chess all day!

P.S. I know I’m a bit behind on game recaps from the Sacramento Chess Club Closed Championship. I’ll be working on getting those up some time in the near future, so long as my work schedule doesn’t burn me out again!